


Birds of a Feather Fuck Together

by calrissian18, maichan808 (maichan)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Human, And A Lot of Non-Derek Flirting Too, Asshole Stiles Stilinski, Ballet dancer Stiles, Hipster Laura Hale, Liberal Mentions of Past Stiles Relationships, M/M, Minor (Off-screen) Character Death, Orphan Stiles, Poor Stiles, Punk Stiles Stilinski, Recluse Derek Hale, Rich Derek Hale, Tattooed Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 12:16:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3850663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18, https://archiveofourown.org/users/maichan/pseuds/maichan808
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura is a crusader without a cause, Stiles dances like the whole world's betrayed him and Derek's having trouble getting both feet outside his door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birds of a Feather Fuck Together

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Birds of a Feather Fuck Together by calrissian18 同是天涯淪落人](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467029) by [malucko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malucko/pseuds/malucko)



> Jesus, it feels like I _birthed_ this fic with how much effort this required of me. (If I'd known, I never would've done it, I swear.) I owe Mai a thousand million and one apologies over how long this took and thank you a bajillionty times over for your patience, persistence and art. Which is even more incredible than I've come to expect and, completely _unbelievably_ , made for me!!1! I'll never be able to explain to you how cool or amazing or balls to the wall fantastic I find that because I don't word good. Thank you to Spacii for the title (and for cleverly sticking me with it, ya jerk), Chosenfire for helping me plot, bleep0bleep for the read-through, feedback and general niceness (which is just utterly alien to me), Emeraldawn for the alpha read, the plotting, the encouragement and the whip-cracking and Jonjo for the - as always - super speedy beta work (and for leaving me the note, "I only just realised they're not called 'Powderpuff Girls,'" because I just about died, no joke *wheezy laughter*)! Any remaining mistakes are my own because I do not know how to leave things alone.
> 
> I had a GD army and it still took me over two months, and all because I innocently stumbled across [this gifset](http://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/post/111962444684/take-me-to-church-x) on tumblr and then, also innocently, watched the corresponding video 80,000 times and then, even MORE innocently, sent it around to everyone I knew (including Mai, which kickstarted this whole thing, that's right, I'm blaming YOU with your, "I'll art!" nonsense).
> 
> Rebloggable maichan art link [here](http://maichan808.tumblr.com/post/117785543092/art-for-birds-of-a-feather-dancer-stiles-rich). DO IT.  
> Rebloggable gryffindorkwinchester art link [here](http://gryffindorkwinchester.tumblr.com/post/157032098209/youre-angry-with-the-whole-world-and-the-way-you). THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS FOR YOU TO DO.

 

“I don’t think your recruitment speech is meant to leave your audience squirming, Uncle Peter.”

Laura strode into the room, all leather jacket and steel and Derek made a conscious effort not to look as though he was leaning  _away_ from his uncle.  Reclined rather than recoiling.  Though he suspected no matter how much he eased into it, the picture had already been made clear. 

Peter smiled slickly, the kind of smile Derek could  _hear_.  The left side of his mouth rose higher than the right, his burned skin less flexible.  “Ah, Laura.  What a pleasant surprise.”  His eyes flicked over her and the smile stretched into more of a smirk.  “And what part are you dressing for this afternoon?  Leader of the revolution?”  He laughed spitefully, eyes lingering on Laura’s wavy and unstyled hair.  “You know, the commoners tend not to flock to those in  _designer_  combat boots.”  He clicked his tongue.  “I suppose it’s better than the princess phase you went through.  More holier than thou and less officious at least.”

“If you were under the impression that I was soliciting your opinion by sharing air with you, I’m afraid you were gravely mistaken.”  Laura didn’t even look at him to dismiss him.  She was too concerned with uncorking a decanter and sniffing its contents, as though she suspected their uncle might have poisoned it during his short visit.  Apparently deciding it hadn’t been tampered with, or more likely that it was worth the risk either way, she poured herself a glass and sipped it calmly.

Whiskey, probably, if Derek had to guess.  She’d migrated to that in recent years.  Derek hadn’t pointed out the obvious connection to their father’s drink of choice because he knew better than to  _elicit_  her derision.

Peter’s eyes went hard, flinty, but his smile stayed in place.  Derek was tempted to tell him it made no difference to let it drop as it wasn’t having the effect he was hoping for regardless.  It was too inherently smarmy.  His gaze flicked back to Derek.  “Do think on what I said, Derek.” 

“Of course,” Derek lied. 

Laura sneered after him as he picked himself up and headed out.  She took the seat Peter had only so recently vacated, waiting until he was out of sight to slouch in a way she never would’ve done were he still in the room and gulp at her drink.  “Is he still after you to take a position?” 

Derek nodded, staring at a patch of carpet filled with twisting designs. 

Even so, he could see Laura eyeing him unwaveringly from the corner of his eye.  “You know he doesn’t actually want a partner,” she said, challenging him to either claim the knowledge or sway him towards it with just her tone.  “He wants a lackey and knows you don’t care enough not to yield to him.  He means to keep you under his thumb with the promise of a paycheck and a purpose.”

Derek read what Laura was truly saying, that Derek wasn’t smart enough or savvy enough to keep pace with their uncle.  She wasn’t wrong, he thought with a bitter twist to his lips.  It was his gullibility that had led to the demise of any happiness they had ever known and that couldn’t be argued.

He sighed, rolling his eyes.  “This isn’t the first time we’ve discussed it, Laura.  I know your feelings on the matter.”  He didn’t want it regardless.  He didn’t want much of anything, truthfully. 

Laura pulled a face.  “They’re not my  _feelings_  on the matter.  That’s reality and we both know how out of touch with that you are.  If it’s not another Russian lit novel then the chances of you knowing anything about it are slim.  If it’s anything five feet outside this door actually, it’s unlikely.”  It was a familiar jab, his misanthropic retreat from society, and – because it was his sister making the observation – it got under his skin in a way little else did.

“I go out,” he retorted mulishly, hating the way Laura could make him revert back to wanting to cross his arms and pout in seconds flat.

“At three a.m. to twenty-four hour bookstores so you barely have to interact with other human beings?  That’s not living, Derrière.”  Laura set her glass down, leaned forward.  The leather of her jacket squeaked against the thighs of her skinny jeans.  It was a costume she was wearing, as their uncle had noted, and a new one.  Laura was a crusader without a cause, though she was forever trying out the feel of different soapboxes.  “Come to the theater with me tonight.”

“ _Laura_.”

“I’ll leave you alone for a whole week about your hermit lifestyle if you do,” she dangled.

And it was simply too enticing an offer to dismiss.  Derek could see in the tightness of her face how badly she wanted it and he bargained, “ _Two_  weeks. 

“Done,” she agreed cheerily, eyes glinting like she’d gotten the better half of the deal.  Derek’s insides squirmed, worrying she might’ve.

* * *

“I genuinely thought the air might be toxic to you after spending so long indoors and having it filtered,” Laura said to him idly, subtly adjusting the way her dress fell over her breasts.  It was a dramatic cut with an open back, twin strips of fabric that fell across her chest, as though strapping it in and converging to meet her waist.  It seemed, in this, she couldn’t resist dressing the debutante she’d been raised to be.

Derek somehow managed to refrain from noting the hypocrisy.  “Ha ha,” he responded dryly, adjusting his thin tie with one hand and sliding the other into the pocket of his dark slacks.  He glanced around at their fellow, well-dressed audience members, milling around and greeting old friends with false smiles.  He tilted his head back to stare up at the marquee, brought it level again with a pronounced frown.  “And what have you tricked me into?”

“It’s meant to be quite ground-breaking actually.”

“It worries me that you haven’t answered the question,” Derek muttered from the corner of his mouth, playing with his collar.  Already feeling claustrophobic.

Laura rolled her eyes.  “Of course, why would you even entertain the idea that you might enjoy yourself?” she asked rhetorically, leading him inside and to the bar.  “It’s a ballet and I would appreciate it if you’d voice all your complaints out of earshot of those who’ve either written or are part of the troupe that will perform it.”

“A night of classical music and watching starved women fling themselves acrobatically from one side of the stage to the other, where could I  _possibly_  find complaint in that?” Derek said, the words having marinated in sarcasm before he produced them and punctuating them with a biting grin.

“How shocking that your mind is made up well before you know the truth of the situation.”  She daintily sipped at the drink the bartender had produced.  “Funny, I might’ve thought you’d learned your lesson about that but apparently not.” 

Something in Derek’s stomach curdled, shoulders slumping in towards the sudden concavity of his chest.  Breath knocked out and fight whisked away that quickly.  It was a low blow and one his sister never seemed to tire of delivering.  Because, see, she hated Derek, possibly more than she did their uncle.  She simply felt a loyalty to him that she couldn’t easily dismiss.

He straightened up, made as though to leave when she grabbed his forearm and tugged him back.  “Don’t pout,” she admonished.

“Any other orders you’d like to give while talking is still permitted?” he asked, arching his eyebrow dangerously.  He was vibrating with a need to get away from her or, more truthfully, a need to break out of his own skin.

“Why don’t we save the drama for inside the theater,” she requested blandly, utterly unrepentant. 

Derek supposed he deserved that.  Even so, he wished he’d worn something heavier to ward off the chill of his sister’s disapproval. 

Laura produced their tickets from her handbag at the door and Derek went above and beyond to avoid touching even the knees or elbows of the glitterati they had to pass on the way to their seats.  If there hadn’t been such a large traffic jam of exaggerated cooing and beaded dresses in the main hall leading up to the stairs, Derek might’ve been able to avoid human contact entirely.

Laura turned and smirked as though she was reveling in his discomfort.  She probably was.

They had a box to themselves.  Their parents’ seats still bought and paid for, if never again to be occupied by them.  Laura purposefully didn’t glance at them whereas Derek allowed himself a long moment to stare.  The guilt festered in his gut before he could convince himself to look away.

When he sat, Laura placed a hand over the one he’d rested on his knee.  She squeezed and let her fingers fall away.

Derek closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, nostrils flaring, to beat the emotions back.  The lights dimmed above them, low ones flaring up around their feet that would lead them to their exits.  The music began slow, conventional, a hum rising to a swarm of sound, strings being plucked at the forefront.

One by one, graceful, long-limbed dancers came onto the stage, movements emphasizing the length of them, the almost alien contortions of their bodies and the control of each gesture and Derek promptly lost interest.  The music was soothing, he could say that, but the story was trite and told through such an unimaginative medium.  As far from ‘ground-breaking’ as he could've imagined really.  Girl loves boy, boy loves another, girl throws herself from a cliff.  Or some such nonsense.  Whomever was responsible for the act here clearly thought the grand gestures and flying leaps would hide the lack of a unique narrative.

It didn’t.

Laura spent the entirety of the first act straight-backed and engaged and spoke to former friends of their parents during intermission, whose voices were apparently permanently altered to come out more nasally than should’ve been possible and who thought expensive fabric could hide inherent frumpiness.  Derek leaned up against the bar, hand in his pocket, his other fumbling with a toothpick and generally tried to look unapproachable.  Mouth pinched and eyebrows drawn low usually did the trick.

He briefly considered trying to convince Laura to ditch the second act, but knew better than to think she would agree, at least not while maintaining their deal, and he reluctantly accompanied her back to their seats.  He didn’t have to touch anyone to get there this time, which was a small consolation.

By the time the rest of the crowd had settled and the lights had dimmed again, he was reflexively flipping his wrist over every few seconds, forgetting he’d not strapped a watch to it.  Which seemed like a grand oversight now as he had no idea when this monstrosity might be over, though  _surely_ it must be on its last legs.  He was genuinely toying with the idea of counting the seconds in his head when the music died away so suddenly that it left behind a vacuum.

Derek blinked but the stage was empty.  It seemed an abrupt way to end but at least it  _had_  ended, perhaps  _that_  was the (literal) show-stopping bit of it.  He couldn’t say it did much for him but he was already agreeably pushing himself up out of his seat, having entirely missed the conclusion as he was instead staring at the shine on his shoes, when sound slipped back in.

A sole violin glided over the silence and slowly rose as a pointe shoe appeared from the side of the stage.  Derek lowered himself back down and sat up in his seat, and he noticed he wasn’t the only one to do so either.  A man followed the foot, dressed only in flesh-colored tights that just barely covered his knee.  They made him look almost nude and sexless in certain spots of light as he stepped forward, dragging one foot behind him as though he was being pulled to the center, head hung low.  He was splashed in vibrant war paint: tattoos that covered large swaths of his pale skin etched in bold colors and clearly meant to be some kind of record of wars fought, and Derek wanted to catalogue them but was too entranced with his slow movement across the stage.

The violin grew to an almost uncomfortable crescendo before dropping off and then a sharp beat joined it, an  _electronic_  thumping that was almost like the shock of a heartbeat pulsing through them, making all the audience breathe in the same rhythm.  The man on the stage was breathing it too, chest heaving almost theatrically so they truly couldn’t miss each inhale.  At the same moment that the music had picked up, he’d slid a hand up into his shaggy hair, looking weary, and then his long fingers were grasping, tugging, and he was flipping his whole body by that hand as though the movement had happened entirely independent of him. 

He landed on his feet but they so quickly slid out from under to hit hard on his knees in a kneel, then he was spinning himself over, hands caught under him to keep his chest from colliding into the stage beneath him.  He threw himself over, rolling off of his back and finding his feet again only to propel himself back.

He danced what Derek felt.  Defeated yet defiant.

 

 

It was a  _violent_ , yet somehow reverent thing to watch.  The few moves that Derek recognized as standard for ballet, while executed perfectly, were always stubbornly knocked off track.  He stumbled and fell as often as he jetéd or briséd, though he was graceful in  _every_  movement, even when he was being broken down.  And, yet, every time he got back up, it was with more and more fury driving his movements, more effort and passion thrown into the stretch of his body.  He was a force of nature across the stage, feet leaving the ground entirely as he got more brazen, less able to be held down.

But as his movements got larger, the control surrounding them bled away.  He was the embodiment of recklessness, his dancing gained a smoothness and cohesiveness that Derek wouldn’t have thought possible.  When he fell, he slid, he rolled, he thrust himself forward and back as though he was being yanked around by strings.  He was being thrown around with such power, faster and faster, like a whirling top and Derek was on the edge of his seat, torn between wanting him to stop and wanting him to reach the climax of this wildness.

He spun once and then again in midair, straightened one leg and bent the other for a third and then he was falling, clawing across the lacquered wood and at the same time looking as if something was trying to pull him back.  He kicked out of it, spinning onto his back and used only his shoulder blades and the points of his toes to lift his pelvis, hair sweaty and plastered to his forehead, face and torso dotted with moles and chest heaving and Derek felt his cock start to swell in response.  It was so easy to picture himself between the spread of his thighs, scraping nails down his sides, dragging him in by his hips, fitting a hand around his neck while they fucked.

Derek hadn’t had sex in well over a year, hadn’t thought about it in nearly as long, content and  _safe_  in his isolation, but he wanted to  _drown_  in it with this boy.  This boy who danced like the whole world was out to get him, like he was angry and it wasn’t  _enough_.  Derek understood that, understood everything behind this and wanted to be a part of it with him.

The electronica was starting to fade from the instruments tugging at him and he was frozen in a breathless kneel, back pressed forward so his spine was curved intensely and reaching up.  He flinched inward twice corresponding to two sharp stabs of the violin and then the piano was melodiously playing him out as he sunk to lay flat on the stage, vanquished. 

The piano floated out until the violin, just as it had sounded in the beginning of his entrance, was all that was left.  The curtains closed on him and reopened again on the lead girl, dressed all in white and telling a story Derek would never be able to relate to.  He wasn’t sure how the tattooed boy factored in, recognized him vaguely as a supporting dancer from the beginning but had no idea what his story had been throughout the other two character’s lovesick leaping.

He adjusted the line of his cock in his slacks to better hide his hard-on and slumped back in his seat, disinterested once again but with new purpose now.

He ignored Laura’s lead when the curtain closed for the last time, not to be distracted as his eyes had been peeled for any glimpse of the tattooed boy (there hadn’t been another), and he struck out on his own while she talked  _at_  him about the performance.  Derek couldn’t have responded if he wanted to, weaving in and out of guests, trying to brush against them as little as possible.  Laura seemed to realize, when he didn’t immediately break off towards the exit, that he was on a mission that entirely baffled her and she snagged him by the crook of his elbow and dragged him back as soon as they were clear enough for it.  “Where are you  _going_?”  There was definite curiosity to her exasperation.  

Instead of answering, Derek tugged her along to the stage door.  Where the performers would exit.  He had to see the boy who had danced so passionately onstage, had to know if he carried that everywhere, had to know if his wildness was tempered by control like it first had been during his performance or if he was simply  _violence_  in person, the way his dance had ended.

They weren’t the only ones with the idea, though Derek had got them there early enough that they would be one of the first people greeted.

Laura raised her eyebrow.  “You’re  _willingly_  submitting to meeting people?  Performers even, and I know how you think of them as some sort of subspecies.”

“I’m curious,” Derek deflected, hoping it would prove to be  _enough_  of a straight answer. 

Laura’s gaze narrowed on the side of Derek’s face.  He pretended not to notice.  “About the dancer with the tattoos?  He was the only thing that made you sit up and take notice the whole night.” 

There was something sly in her tone, something that grabbed Derek’s attention and he turned to her purposefully, trying to sound less interested than he was.  “Do you know something about him?”  He licked his lower lip, searching for some ease he didn’t feel so Laura wouldn’t realize the worth of the card she held. 

“Perhaps,” she said, tossing her styled hair to one side, facing away from him.   _Fuck_.  

Derek gritted his teeth, pinched his thigh from the inside of his pocket to keep his voice from falling into a growl.  “And you’re not immediately blurting it out to the first even marginally interested party?  Hard to believe.  In fact,  _impossible_  to believe.  I’d buy you knowing about the rest of the cast but him?  He’s a bit too contemporary for you to have a handle on.”  His sister wasn’t a gossip but she  _was_  an overly elegant hipster and doubting her knowledge of any recent trend would get her desperate to prove she was the  _most_  informed about it.

“That’s why I  _don’t_ know that his name is Stiles Stilinski, he’s twenty-four and he’s been dancing professionally for five years, the last one with this company?” she ground out, predictably rising to the bait while Derek memorized every word out of her mouth.

It was an odd name.  Perhaps a stage one and likely more familiar to him than anything else.  Derek liked the combination of soft and hard in the syllables.  He was younger than Derek by five, going on six, years and  _looked_  even younger than that based on what Derek had seen of him on stage.  He was actually glad to learn that he was a bit older than he’d expected.  Less chance Derek could ruin him then.

“It was an inspiring performance, don’t you think?”

Derek’s head whipped back to Laura, mouth falling slightly open.  It was simply amazing to him how badly she’d misinterpreted it.  Because, no, it wasn’t.  There was nothing  _inspiring_  in what Stiles had done, but Derek wouldn’t have expected her to get it, to  _understand_  it the way he had.  For all their similarities, Laura was infinitely less broken than he was.  That performance hadn’t been inspiring.  It had been heartbreaking.  An incomplete depiction of frustration, of regret, of defeat, of what mortal men looked like when they were picked on by gods.  Stiles danced like the world was shit and he only got back up because some unquenchable instinct in his gut told him to. 

Some days that instinct was all that got Derek out of bed.  And it was getting less and less effective as time wore on, getting him out of bed but not out of the house.  He was patiently waiting for the moment that it would fail entirely, curious to himself whether he would feel more apathy or fear over it when it did come. 

“Derek?”  Laura’s voice came out slightly sharp and Derek resisted the urge to wince. 

His hands were starting to sweat slightly, the creases damp, and he wiped them on his thighs from the inside of his pockets, trying to draw as little attention to the movement as possible.  The fabric was too slick to absorb much, which was only making his nerves worse.  “It was something,” he muttered under his breath just before the doors swept open.

A herd of people he vaguely recognized from the performance came spilling out, the dancers being pulled aside by audience members who wanted to pay compliments or  _get paid_  in autographs.  Derek was starting to perspire where his collar met his neck, fabric growing wet and ears getting hot even as the parade of people slowly began to fade from a stream to a trickle, the well-dressed guests around them dispersing with them.

There was a delicate frown on Laura’s face, not at all deep-set.  “Perhaps we missed him,” she suggested after another few minutes, (impossible), arms crossed over her middle.  Cold but trying not to be vulgar in her display to get warm. 

Derek wordlessly shrugged out of his jacket and placed it carefully over her shoulders, settling the fabric rather than touching her skin.  Her shawl was impractical, sheer and thin, and resting in the crooks of her elbows regardless.  She adjusted the fall of the sleeves and didn’t address the gesture. 

Derek didn’t care.  There was a curly-haired boy holding the door open and then  _him_ , Stiles – if Laura’s knowledge could be believed.   His palm was resting unnecessarily up against it, as though to push it open despite the fact that it was already being done for him.  He had wrist warmers on, slouching down his forearms and a heavy, navy blue sweatshirt that looked at least two sizes too big on him.  Otherwise he was still in the nude tights, sweatshirt covering them halfway down his thighs, and some kind of high-top sneakers.  He was talking to the boy holding the door open for him too quietly to hear, hitching a duffle up on his shoulder and digging inside. 

He dragged out and pulled on an orange beanie while Derek watched him and then his brown eyes flicked over to take in him and Laura, the only ones still waiting.  He elbowed the curly-haired boy, muttered with his mouth pulled to the side, “Dude,  _fans_.”  He put a strange emphasis on the word, the way someone else might’ve said, ‘Dude,  _roaches_.’  

Derek didn’t take it personally.  It was how he felt about people after all.  The curly-haired kid sauntered over, tall and long-limbed and completely uninteresting.  Laura smiled politely but Derek minutely shook his head, eyes fastened to Stiles’. 

Stiles’ own widened in surprise and, when they did, they seemed to get even clearer, as though they were magnifying every light nearby and Derek had thought they were brown but maybe they were golden somehow.  Stiles walked closer warily, hands in the joey pocket of his sweatshirt, shoulder lifting to settle his bag.  This close, Derek could see hardware he didn’t think he’d been wearing on stage.  Earrings in both ears, a few more on the bridge of one of them, three in quick succession, and a small hoop through his lip. 

There was also a tattoo on the side of his neck that Derek could see clearly for the first time.  It was colorful, a huge eye with the Earth in place of an iris or pupil.  He raised his eyebrows, moles dotting his cheek and jaw, skin smooth and looking warm to the touch and Derek had never been so painfully attracted to anyone in his entire life.  His breathing was shallow and stuttering and this must be what  _awe_  felt like.  Stiles chewed on his lower lip impatiently, the unpierced side, and Laura swooped in.

“You were brilliant onstage,” her gaze swept over to the curly-haired kid politely, inclusively.  “The both of you.” 

The curly-haired boy nudged Stiles.  “Stiles is the one talented enough to nab a solo like that.”

“I’d never seen ballet like it,” Laura agreed.

Stiles yanked at his beanie, dragging it down in the back like an anxious gesture.  There was a tuft of hair above one of his eyes poking out, covering his eyebrow.  Derek was a little surprised to find his hands weren’t tattooed, at least what he could see of them around the warmers, but he was glad of it.  They were perfect enough on their own.  He would hate to see any bit of them covered up.  “Yeah, it’s, er, certainly getting attention.  You sure you’re not here to call it vulgar or something?” he asked with a low, derisive chuckle, a wry smile playing over his lips and sharing a look with the other boy.  The implication obviously being that that was the usual commentary. 

Derek couldn’t understand that.  Stiles’ dance had been beautiful.  Hideous and soul-crushing but still beautiful.

“I actually work as a part-time editor for  _Hark & Hale_, maybe you’ve heard of it?” Laura announced suddenly, the idea clearly blooming as she said it.  “I’d be happy to include a glowing review of your performance.”  She said it as though recognizing it for the grand favor it was and she was being good enough to offer it without any hope of recompense. 

The smile Stiles was wearing grew larger and, again, seemed to be designed to imply a joke was being shared.  His gaze flicked over Laura, cataloguing her with a raise of his lip and almost encouraging her to break character.  “Family-owned?  Inherited or something like that, right?”  He snorted to himself, tongued the corner of his mouth while Laura’s expression tightened, soured.  “I’m sorry, lady,” he said, clearly far from it, “but  _you_?   _Work_?”  He shook his head, rubbed at his lip, dropped his eyes back down her again.  He was close to a sneer, clearly bent on insulting her the way she had him, even if Laura’s hadn’t been intentional.  “Yeah, I don’t fucking think so.”

Curly elbowed him hard in the stomach under the guise of lifting his bag up higher on his shoulder.  He grimaced apologetically.  “Sorry, there’s a reason we don’t really let him out in public.” 

Laura’s eyes were narrowed and it was clearly all she could do to keep from lashing out in return.  “Charming,” she said so dryly it sounded almost painful on her throat.

To Derek’s intense surprise (and attraction), Stiles started laughing.  Laura was intimidating, to all walks of life, Derek had seen as much but Stiles looked utterly unfazed.  “You going to hire someone to kick my ass, princess?” he asked between chuckles.  He turned purposefully away from the both of them.  “Let’s fucking go, Isaac.”

The curly-haired kid – Isaac – rolled his eyes.  “You are such a dick, you know that?” he said under his breath, clearly not meant for their ears though not caring if they overheard either. 

Laura scoffed at their backs and said snidely, “Well, I can see why  _you_  like him.” 

The odd thing was, Derek did like him.  Liked him even  _more_  now and genuinely couldn’t have imagined a better way for this meeting to have gone.  He liked that Stiles had stood up for himself rather than kept his mouth shut and accepted the hand-out.  Liked that in the same way Laura had assumed his perceived poorness was a weakness, he had turned her wealth into one right back.  He wore what little he had as body armor, like he was at war with the whole world.  He was defensive and cruel and kept everything and everyone at a distance and Derek  _got_  it.  He got  _him._ Because he did the same.  He focused more on the physical while Stiles seemed to be more interested in playing emotional keep-away but they were both diligently laying down brick after brick of their own personal walls.

Laura glared at him.  “Can we go then?”  She wasn’t used to being bested and this was undoubtedly going to make her unpleasant for days. 

Derek waved her off.  “You go.” 

She sighed, and not in a way Derek would’ve expected.  Not like his exasperated older sister but with concern and defeat.  “Of course you’re not finished with him.  You’ve finally found someone who abhors people as much as you do.”  She grabbed him by the arm as he went to take off after them.  “Derek, just…  _think_ , okay?  Don’t do anything stupid.”  Her eyes were round, serious, and Derek swallowed over how imploring they were.

“I promise,” he said, having no idea if he could keep to it.  Or what exactly it would take to either. 

Laura dipped her chin, accepting his answer either way and Derek jogged to catch up with Stiles.  The sound of his footfalls made both Stiles and the curly-haired boy turn their heads.  “Can I take you out for a drink?” he asked, slightly breathless and without even a glance at Isaac.  He wanted to be clear about who this invitation was meant for.

Stiles didn’t hide his surprise well.  “Whoa, he speaks,” he said snidely, rudely, in an attempt to cover for his slight stutter.  His eyes flicked over Derek’s shoulder and then his head bobbed around him back to where Laura had been.  “Dude, shouldn’t you be pumping up your girlfriend’s ego or is she off trying and failing to find one single person in her life who actually gets their hands dirty?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Stiles,” Isaac murmured, rubbing a hand over his face and squaring up his shoulders like he thought this might turn into a fight.

“She’s my sister,” Derek told him, watching the shine on his lower lip.  He shrugged.  “And she’s trying.”

Stiles’ eyes narrowed, assessing, like this was a turn he hadn’t been expecting and now he needed to recalibrate.  “Well I don’t care about her fucking life story, or yours.  And I don’t want a drink either,” he decided after he was done gauging Derek’s sincerity.  “I’m goddamn starving, always am after nights where I get to do that.  You game?”

Derek nodded a few times, measured, because otherwise he might get frantic with it.  Stiles had this untouchable quality to him that Derek had no doubt was completely accurate to his character and he was desperate to find his way around it because he’d never wanted to touch anyone so badly.  He hardly wanted to touch anyone  _at all_.

Stiles jerked his chin over his shoulder to Isaac.  “I’ll meet up with you later, man,” he said without turning to look.  “I’m going to grab some grub with—” He arched his eyebrows questioningly.

“Derek,” Derek provided, hands sweating all over again.

“Cool, I’m Stiles,” he said, like he was going to offer his hand but he kept both in his joey pocket.  Derek appreciated that since his own were now embarrassingly damp. 

Isaac’s gaze went sharp like he was trying to judge everything Derek was with just his eyes.  His lip raised disapprovingly.  “Yeah, be careful, Stiles,” he said, keeping his gaze trained on Derek.  “You know how I am about public speaking, man, and a eulogy is really going to drain me.”

Stiles flipped him off over his shoulder and fell into step with Derek.  His lips tugged to the side in a smirk and his gaze cut over slyly to Derek as he led him back the way they’d just come from.  “You think I was brilliant too, huh?”  The way he said it, it was meant to antagonize.  Like he was only waiting for Derek’s inevitable wrong answer so he could laugh. 

Derek didn’t care.  Stiles was slight and threw his weight around, didn’t have brawn but had a silver tongue.  He attacked everything and everyone, a wounded animal trapped in a cage, and it was already predictable behavior based off what little Derek had seen of him.  He was the one who would have to prove himself here, not Stiles.  Stiles’ default wasn’t trust until trust was lost, wasn’t innocent until proven guilty.  It was suspicion until there was irrefutable proof you weren’t a danger.

“Terrible,” Derek told him truthfully, swallowing dryly.  Stiles drew back in clear surprise.  Derek didn’t give him time to feel insulted though before he plowed on.  “You’re angry with the whole world and the way you dance,” Derek’s eyes went slightly glazed, letting himself fall back into how he’d felt watching it, “has a way of drawing me in, making me want to be on your side even though I know you won’t end up on top.  You’re going to get beaten down but you make the struggle look as worthwhile as any victory could.”

 

 

So many people would never understand that.  It would look like something violent but without purpose and all because it didn’t have a happy ending, it didn’t all work out, the hero didn’t conquer.  Stiles was defeated at the end of it but the fact that he fought the battle was the part that was worthy of note.

Derek wouldn’t be surprised if his moment with Stiles paralleled that.  There was no chance of a successful future with him.  He was too wild and untamable, vicious rather than docile in his misery due to his youth, too broken but not in complementary ways to Derek’s own collapsibility.

It was the fact that Derek had reached out to him that was the plot here.  He could feel proud of that alone.  He could.  This was Raskolnikov murdering Alyona, the catalyst to the entirety of the story that follows, but still truthfully only meriting a single bullet point in comparison to the hundreds of pages exploring the human psyche that would follow.

His sweaty hand curled into a fist in his pocket and his shoulders shook a little, like he’d caught a chill.  Laura had reappropriated his jacket and it was November in New York, it wasn’t unexpected.  It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that Derek wanted a  _much longer_ story with the only person who’d held his interest since his high school girlfriend had turned everything in his life to ash.

It took Derek a moment to notice that Stiles had stopped cold; he had gotten so lost in his memory of watching him dance and what would come of it.  He cringed slightly, worrying he had already worn out his welcome, though he was absolutely certain he hadn’t misinterpreted the message of Stiles’ dance.  He was simply afraid that maybe he wasn’t  _supposed_  to have seen it, or at least voiced it. 

Stiles didn’t react when he was buffeted by a few passersby after his dead stop, only reached up slowly and rubbed under his lip with his forefinger, back and forth for a long moment.  His chest was heaving slightly and his eyes were glued to Derek’s.  Derek braced himself as best he could for Stiles’ rejection.  He opened his mouth, head tilted and said bluntly, “Do you want to fuck me?”

“Yes.”  It came out as a croak but it was the right answer at least. 

Stiles nodded once, like now that that’d been firmed up, he could start planning for it.  He shrugged.  “Cool, you got a place around here or—”

“A few blocks up,” Derek told him, trying not to look as stunned as he felt.  It was a huge apartment and truthfully the only things Derek liked about it included the view and the library.  He’d gotten it shortly after he’d turned eighteen, basically as soon as someone would assist a reckless, angry teenager with a wad of money he was eager to unload himself of.  He’d been so sick of Laura’s puffy eyes in the morning, the way her lip would tremble when she sighed, the way the fingers of alcohol in her glass were starting to add up to a fist, the way their uncle would hang around and try to mimic the textbook depiction of concern.  The guilt was awful enough without having to see the veterans of the war he’d brought to their door. 

It’d been the first thing he’d found, overpriced and pretentious but his own oasis away from his family.  What was left of it anyway.

Stiles walked the city like he was the consummate pedestrian and Derek wondered if it was this place that had given him the flair for it or if Stiles was a perpetual traveler thanks to his company.  Basically, did he live here or was he nomadic and how often could Derek lay eyes on him?  He wanted to ask but knew how easy it would be to provoke Stiles’ derision and he was too near to something he desperately wanted.  Not  _all_  he wanted, but certainly part of it.

“I didn’t expect you to agree,” Stiles said once they were stopped at a corner, lifting up onto his toes and stretching his calves without even seeming to notice what he was doing.  He bounced on them slightly before actually turning to look at Derek, finally removing his hands from the pocket of his sweatshirt and biting on his thumbnail.  It wasn’t a nervous gesture, more like a bored one and Derek blinked against the glaring red light of the hand across from them telling them to hold their place.  So he’d gone from an idiot to a coward in Stiles’ estimation in the short length of their walk.  He wondered what his new designator was now.

“Maybe you don’t have me pegged half as well as you think you do then.”  Derek tried to inject some chill into his voice but he couldn’t quite get there.  Looking into Stiles’ eyes all he could manage was a fascination over the length of his eyelashes and, running his tongue over the inside of his own lower lip, thinking of Stiles’ lip ring on his.  He’d never kissed anyone with piercings of any sort.  He’d barely ever kissed anyone.  Kate was the start and finish of all his sexual history, enough of a bad experience that he thought the book’d been written on that already.  As a result, he had no idea how that might work.

He badly wanted to find out. 

Stiles seemed like one of those people who couldn’t be told anything.  So sure of himself, of what the world was at such a young age and unwilling to accept anything different.  Who was Derek to say he didn’t know though?  Who knew what he’d been through?  Whatever it was, it had warped him to an entirely new shape.  Stiles huffed out a laugh, muttered, “We’ll see.”  There was a healthy dose of doubt there, just as Derek had predicted, and suddenly Derek wanted to shock him. 

He carefully pulled Stiles’ hand away from his mouth.  His skin was warm, soft, and his wrist warmer kept their palms from touching and made Derek’s even sweatier.  He hadn’t willingly touched anyone in so long and his skin tingled with his own daring.  He was intensely aware of how fragile everything about this was and tried to gentle his callused fingers.  He kept grip on Stiles’ wrist, not daring to part with it now that he’d finally reached out for him, and held Stiles’ gaze while he leaned in.  He pressed a gentle kiss to his lips, a barely there sensation of their mouths brushing, and even that made his knees want to buckle and something swoop in his gut.  There was the tickle of his ring as Derek’s lips found his but he tried to avoid it more than anything else, afraid he might aggravate it somehow. 

His heart was in his throat and, when he pulled back, the light beating its way into his periphery was white – signaling they should move on and Stiles was blinking dumbly at him.  Finally he seemed to regain his equilibrium and his lips stretched into a mocking smile.  “You know I’m not going back to your place and  _making love_  to you, right?”  He said it like someone else might say, ‘mold spores.’  “I asked if you wanted to  _fuck_  me, not lay me down and love me tender.”  He snorted, like the very idea of that was laughable.  “Tell me right now if you’re not up for this,” he challenged.

Derek narrowed his eyes, dragged Stiles in by his waist and bit down hard on the skin around his lip ring.  He tugged at it more gently with his teeth, tongue soothing the skin around the metal, making as much of the circular motion with the tip of it as he could.  It had felt momentous only a moment ago and now he just wanted to prove Stiles  _wrong_.  That he could be everything Stiles was so baselessly sure he couldn’t be.  His hand dropped from the small of Stiles’ back to his ass.  He squeezed, dragged him forward, spreading Stiles’ thighs with his own.

Stiles gasped in surprise, in arousal, in  _what_  Derek didn’t know but he didn’t take any time to guess.  He shoved his tongue in and Stiles’ hands came up to his neck, his hair, his body arching back so he could arch his hips  _in_.  The thick material of his wrist warmers made Derek even hotter, upper lip sweating, and he was panting into Stiles’ mouth, didn’t even pull back to say, “There won’t be any complaints.”  He had no idea if that was true but he was willing to meet the challenge Stiles presented just by virtue of being himself.  He’d never been this sexually confident and truthfully he wasn’t now.  With Kate it  _had_  been love-making.  Love-making designed to make him complacent and encourage  _feelings_  to accompany their sex so when she struck, it would destroy him as surely as it did everything else.  But he knew exactly what he  _wanted_  to do with Stiles.  Had known from the moment he’d seen him. 

His skin had pebbled everywhere Stiles had touched him and he was left experiencing the phantom sensation of his fingers and palms everywhere they had strayed.  All the while trying to pretend it wasn’t having even half as much an effect on him as it was. 

Stiles leaned back in his grip, watched him with searching eyes, dragged a thumb down hard over Derek’s wet lower lip.  “Gonna make you prove that,” he said, breathing a little harder than normal.  He smiled again and this one seemed to be one he was actually  _sharing_  with Derek rather than a response to his own private joke about him.

Stiles pulled away completely, not seeming to like being touched when it wasn’t a prelude to something and shoved his hands back into his pocket. 

Derek tongued at the inside of his cheek, pulling in a single, bracing breath and trying to drag back the momentum they’d just gotten going.  Three more blocks to his apartment and then he wouldn’t have to take his hands off Stiles again until Stiles made him.  He held onto that even as his dick throbbed against his thigh. 

As soon as Stiles was off of him, the cold wind threaded back through his thin dress shirt and brought him back down from the adrenaline high he’d been riding, his half-hard cock pulsing with it.  They stood through another rotation of the light and Stiles kept looking over at him, more curiosity and heat in his gaze than had been there before.  It made Derek’s skin prickle more than the temperature and he really needed Stiles to stop doing that if he wanted Derek to have anything left in him so he could actually perform.

There was something stripping about Stiles’ gaze, like he was trying to call a bluff in a game he wasn’t entirely sure they were playing.  Derek tried to look like he was holding something better than a pair of deuces regardless.

He only pressed closer again when three girls passed them on the sidewalk, two of them batting their eyelashes and biting their lips, clearly having gone to the  _Fifty Shades of Grey_  school of what was sexy.  They looked like the right audience for it at least, old enough to get in but too young to have any actual experience.  Stiles still effortlessly flirted back and Derek was so drawn into that, to the openness and warmth in his expression, that it took the press of cold fingers against the skin of his back to realize Stiles’ hand was there.

He tripped along the edge of Derek’s belt with fumbling, icy fingers under his shirt, turned more into him as he slid his hand down the back of his pants. 

Derek’s breath caught and he hissed, “Stiles, my apartment’s right there.”  He purposefully used Stiles’ name, trying to inject what little intimacy that provided into their interaction.  He gestured up ahead where the doorman was studiously not looking at them. 

Stiles backed him into a skinny tree trunk, Derek’s calves pressed up against the cool metal arches of the tree guard that kept it cordoned off from the sidewalk.  It shuddered under his weight.  Not a single leaf fell from the nearly bare branches.  “Oh fuck.”  The words stuttered out of him, like stones skipping on a lake.  Stiles’ hand grabbed his ass cheek, spread it around the thin tree trunk and he went from barely there to hard enough to cut glass.  Stiles didn’t keep his distance, plastered himself up against Derek’s front, reached his fingers around the spread of his ass, pulled him forward just far enough to drag his forefinger up and down his crack, stopping to brush so fucking lightly and  _relentlessly_  over his hole.  Stiles retreated, eased him back into the trunk and canted his hips slightly against Derek’s.

He leaned in, breath warm against Derek’s neck, said, “They wanted to  _suck_ your dick.”  He hit the word ‘suck’ so hard and so intensely that Derek’s knees nearly buckled, like that was as good as actually experiencing the sensation.  His dick throbbed, as though it knew it was being talked about, and Stiles’ lower lip dragged up his neck, sweeping in to latch onto his earlobe, hot skin and cool metal, and Derek was really starting to get behind this damn lip ring. 

There was no question of what they were doing should anyone pass now but Stiles was moving so slowly and had his duffle so strategically placed that plausible deniability wasn’t outside of their grasp.  Each thrust forward of his dick into Derek’s would push Derek back against the trunk a little harder, the pressure and tease of it making his eyes water.  His neck was flushed with embarrassment, with daring, and there was a part of him that was horrified by this, by sharing something so private so openly, because he was as far from an exhibitionist as it was possible to be, but he felt safe with Stiles.  Protected by his ability to lash out and cow people.

Wanting to do more than simply weather the onslaught of spine-bending arousal and intrusion into his personal space, which Derek was beginning to feel was a test of some kind – of what Stiles could get away with or what Derek would put up with, he grabbed Stiles’ ass with a growl to make him rut harder and Stiles carefully pulled up his sweatshirt so the only thing between them were those tights that left  _nothing_  to the imagination.  Derek could see the  _exact_  shape and size of Stiles’ dick, his balls, and it made his mouth fill with saliva.  He swallowed hastily, dragging Stiles back in and  _slowly_  bending his knees before straightening up again, over and over, moving himself up and down the smooth trunk of the tree and wishing he could fucking  _impale_  himself on it.

That was definitely new. 

Derek’s eyes were closed, head having fallen back and mouth open, trying not to be too obvious or too breathy about his pleasure (and failing miserably).  His fingers kept convulsively clenching into Stiles’ skin with each new rock of their hips when every sensation was yanked away from him.

Stiles had torn himself away of his own volition, turned halfway away from him with a slight smirk and squinted eyes.  He blatantly and unselfconsciously adjusted the line of his cock.  “Your apartment is  _right_  there, you horny fuck.”  His smirk widened into a cheeky smile and Derek dragged him back as he tried to skip off.  Stiles knew now, knew he  _owned_  Derek.  He had been pushing it, so that he knew  _exactly_  how much of an upper hand he had.  Now he knew there wasn’t really a limit.

He rubbed himself unashamedly up against the side of Stiles’ ass cheek, growled into his ear, “I am going to  _wreck_  you.”  He was trying to keep his composure, pretend like this was a competition they were both in.  Like he had some hope of snagging victory.

And he must have been convincing because he  _felt_  Stiles’ shiver as it ran through him with how close they were.  Stiles clucked his tongue, but his voice was  _finally_  shaky.  “Heard a lot of promises from you tonight, fancy man,” he said, eyes narrowed and standing just outside of Derek’s reach.  He kept that same distance all the way up to the door of his building, all the way to the elevator actually. 

The elevator they  _didn’t_ fuck in. 

Which was only decided by it reaching Derek’s floor in a timeframe that Derek would swear was faster than any he’d experienced before.  He reluctantly detached his mouth from Stiles’ collarbone, the feel of it under his tongue hard like the rest of him but dragging these noises out of him that belied the possibility of a softness beneath it, and lowered Stiles back down to the tiled floor.  Stiles’ fingernails were still scraping over his scalp and he pulled away slowly enough to make Derek question letting him. 

There were only three apartments on his level, due to the sheer size of them, and Derek cursed himself for both having the one farthest from the elevator and for locking his door.  What the fuck did he care if people robbed him?  He didn’t have anything worth stealing besides a load of books and a dual-drip coffee maker.

And he could replace all of that.  He wouldn’t be happy about it but if it meant he could have his hands in Stiles’ pants even a minute sooner, he could make his peace with it. 

The keys were hard to dig out and hard to hold onto, cold in his already cold fingers but he managed to get his door open like he’d done it before and he and dexterity had at least a vague sense of each other. 

Stiles stepped in ahead of him without waiting to be invited, brushing Derek aside more than walking in  _with_  him.  He took barely a glance around before his lip was curling and he was smirking almost cruelly, but with a vindication to it.  “Could’ve fucking guessed this,” he said meanly, skirting the dark wood of the dining room table that could comfortably seat ten, eyes sharply cutting up to the chandelier hanging over it with a sneer.  He catalogued the leather seats in the next room, making his way over to stand in front of the wall of windows that opened up on a view of skyscrapers and cloudy sky.

He turned around, purposefully tugged down his sweatshirt, dropping his duffle and beanie with it, so his bare shoulder was exposed and leaned back up against one of the dozens upon dozens of frames.  He was trying to leave a smudge and it was petty and childish and made Derek smile hugely.  Even having come back here for sex, he hadn’t lost any of his defensiveness.  He crossed his arms over his chest as though to prove that point.

Derek doubted it was proving the one he wanted though, not with the skin he was showing already purpling in the shape of Derek’s mouth.  He was singularly the least accessible person Derek had ever met, gave even him a run for his money, and they were about to fuck.  It was weirdly impressive and only made Derek’s interest in him grow, if anything.  “You were saying about how I didn’t know you?”  It was beyond snide.

Derek dropped his keys down on his kitchen counter as he passed it on his way over to Stiles.  He licked his lip, staring at Stiles’ and found himself doing something he’d never done before.  Spilling out everything.  “I got it after most of my family was killed, brothers, sisters,” he breathed in deeply, nostrils flaring, and kept going, “cousins, aunt, parents.  I was eighteen and I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing when I bought this place, just wanted to get away from the accusation in my sister’s eyes.  Because I’m the reason they’re dead.  All of them.  And everyone left knows it.  So, no, Stiles, maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.” 

Stiles swallowed, slouched down off the window until he was standing again.  His eyes narrowed even as he closed the distance between them.  He didn’t look apologetic, he looked annoyed actually.  Annoyed that he’d been wrong.  That he had to try to excuse his behavior.  He frowned purposefully and it was perfunctory rather than heartfelt.  Derek really had no idea what the fuck drove this kid.  And he was, a kid.  On the street it had been seduction, maybe even a little one-upmanship but now.  Now Derek couldn’t even guess.  His golden brown eyes glittered.  “Is any of that actually true or are you just some asshole Wall Street prick with a douchebaggy bluetooth earpiece and more money than God?” he asked, close enough that his piercing brushed against Derek’s mouth. 

Derek lifted his eyebrows, the festering anxiety over telling Stiles as much as he had, already dropping to a simmer rather than a boil.  He didn’t know what he’d wanted but he knew that whatever his expectations were, this didn’t meet them.  He’d told Stiles nearly his whole family was dead, that he was responsible in a capacity he hadn’t bothered to clarify and Stiles’ reaction had been to make a  _joke_.  Derek couldn’t say if that bothered him or not; it was too outside the norm.  Too strange to even gauge.  “What’s going to make you want to fuck me more?” he asked throatily, deciding that was the only thing he cared about.  

“Oh the Wall Street prick, for sure,” Stiles said, grinning, and it felt like his version of an apology.  Derek would take it.  He pulled away, held out his plain, stretched sweatshirt, ratty around the seams, and said, “That guy seems like he’d be more likely to keep me in the style to which I’ve become accustomed.”  He turned away from Derek with a snort, back to dancing eyes that were as sharp as daggers over the extravagance of his apartment, almost like it was all a personal insult to him.  “I’m sorry I’m such an asshole,” he said, tossing the comment over his shoulder at Derek.

“Are you actually?”  Derek already knew the answer, watching him intently as he dragged his fingertips over Derek’s marble counters.

He turned back just enough that Derek could see his smirk.  “No,” he said easily, not seeming to care at all that he hadn’t fooled him with the half-assed apology.  “Hard to be sorry about your whole personality,” he said with another snort, spinning back to Derek and turning out his palms as he leaned up against his counter, holding his weight.  It looked like he was braced on a ballet barre, his background and profession written all over him so clearly in that moment.  Derek wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d raised a leg and started stretching.  He didn’t though, just let his weight fall back to its resting point.  “Besides, it’s not like you didn’t have fair warning, the way I ran off your girlfriend.  Sister,” he corrected lazily, like her relation to Derek had no bearing on theirs, regardless of what it was.  No question of what this was then, if he didn’t care if Derek had a girlfriend.

Derek would just have to make the most of their one night.  He could do that.  “Come here,” he said gruffly and, to his surprise, Stiles did.

The smirking expression on his face made it clear that only because Derek’s desires coincided with his own, was he getting what he wanted here.  Derek pressed his thumb to the ring in Stiles’ lip.  “How rough can I be with this, I’ve never—”

Stiles rolled his eyes.  “Don’t fucking yank on it,” he said dryly.  His expression went less exasperated noting whatever Derek’s was doing, like maybe Derek wasn’t trying to get at him just by existing – and Derek wouldn’t have even thought he was capable of looking that inclusive.  His palms rested lightly on Derek’s forearms and he said, “Pulling is pretty much always a no-go with me.  But biting the skin around it, licking?  All Stiles-approved methods of turning me the fuck on.” 

“So, this.”  Derek was careful about it, cupped Stiles’ cheek, his jaw, tilted his chin up with his thumb and carefully and slowly flicked his tongue over the balled ends of Stiles’ lip ring.  He wasn’t sure who got more of a trip out of the action.  He didn’t pull back until he’d let the tip of his tongue brush the soft skin of his lip too.  Stiles tried to follow mindlessly, eyes half-lidded and leaning forward onto the balls of his feet, palms growing heavy on Derek’s arms.  Derek held him back by his grip on his cheek, brushed his thumb down the slight scratchiness of his jaw.  He breathed warmly against his mouth, brought his thumb back up to pull down his lip so he could see the ring from the inside too.  He bit down on the skin around it, tugged it forward without pulling on the metal and Stiles groaned into his mouth, hands fully untucking Derek’s shirt, sliding up his back.

They were still icy, and yet too warm where the warmers were, and Derek couldn’t help the shiver that snaked up his spine at the feel of them on his skin.  Stiles tried to press in again, bring their lips flush and instead Derek brushed his lower lip against the ring gently.  He could feel Stiles trying to arch into him, trying to get to his mouth and he took a step back from him, let him go completely and Stiles’ hands fell away at the distance.  “That’s all right then?”  He was surprised to find he was breathing hard.  He’d barely done much of anything, teased Stiles’ mouth with his own, but Stiles was panting hard enough to show it too, eyes dark.

“You are such a fucking prick,” he snarled, jamming his mouth against Derek’s.   Derek felt the wince through Stiles’ back as he hit hard against his own piercing in his frustration, but he didn’t pull back, just kept kissing, Derek’s tongue playing with the ring and Stiles’ tongue in turns.

Stiles’ hand drifted down, confident in what he would find and his fingers brushed up against the sensitive skin of Derek’s balls through his pants.  He rubbed gently, not enough to  _give_  but enough to make Derek keen into his mouth.  Stiles’ thumb and palm skimmed up his shaft, only firm to the point that Derek knew he was there.  He reached the head of his cock, rubbed diligently with his thumb over his slit and Derek could feel himself start  _leaking_  as though all he’d needed was the permission.  He was painfully hard and the thin fabric of his pants was doing nothing to conceal how much.

He grabbed Stiles’ wrist when the heel of his palm started dragging back down the shaft of his dick towards his ball sac again and held it at bay.  He wasn’t going to come like this, not when he didn’t know what was going to make Stiles bolt.  He intended to get all he could out of this before that happened. 

Derek ripped off his wrist warmers and pulled him in by the small of his back, one hand under one of Stiles’ thighs and he was in Derek’s arms easily and with barely a lift, legs around his waist and so clearly used to throwing his weight around.  He was heavier than Derek had expected him to be and he dropped both hands to his ass while Stiles smirked at him, like he knew exactly when that desire had been formed. 

Those tights really left  _nothing_  to the imagination, in Derek’s defense. 

Stiles leaned back against the arm holding him, his hands reaching down for the hem of his sweatshirt and pulling it easily over his head with how large it was.  He was wearing nothing underneath as Derek had suspected and Derek could finally see the tattoos that covered him.  The ones on his torso were black, still starkly dark on his pale skin.

There was one over his heart, some kind of bird in flight and the eye of it – though the same black as the rest of it – had a quality to it that made Derek feel like it was watching him.  He dragged a thumb up the span of one of its wings and finally recognized it.  It was a crow, talons and beak sharp and somehow Derek knew it didn’t mean freedom or flight the way it normally did when people got tattoos of birds.  This one was grim and felt like an accusation.

There was something more intense on his side, something that was all interlocking lines and patterns in the shape of a large circle and nothing Derek recognized.  His hip had a branching swirl that was connected to something Derek couldn’t see beneath the tights, though he very much wanted to.  “Are these all of them?” Derek asked the fine hair on Stiles’ chest between his nipples, brushing one of the pale pink nubs with his thumb, gently but insistently.

Stiles snorted, knocking his hand away and trying to hide the way it had made him suck in a sharp breath.  “Not even fucking close, man.” 

Derek affected a frown, bouncing Stiles in his lap, hands on the backs of his thighs and Stiles’ legs clenching around his hips.  “Suppose I’ll just have to keep looking then.”

Stiles’ fingers combed up into his hair, tugging a little uncomfortably and slightly painfully – undoubtedly purposeful, unable to let him have the last word as he tossed back, “Kind of gonna have to demand that you do.”

Derek sunk the top row of his teeth into the bend of Stiles’ neck where it met his shoulder, softly, like he was trying to give Stiles’ skin nothing more than an impression of them.  Meaning Stiles didn’t expect it when he bit down, hard.  He jerked like an electrical current was shocking its way through him and their hips lined up as he did. 

Derek nearly lost his balance, threw out a hand and caught himself on one of the support beams of his kitchen, shoved Stiles up against it with his hips leading the charge.  His mouth went for Stiles’ earlobe, which is when he realized that Stiles’ ears weren’t just pierced with regular earrings; they were small, black gages.  Mistakable from a distance.  He sucked at it more gently than he was planning and more quickly.  He rubbed around the circle of one with just his thumbnail when he’d pulled back, then followed the same path with his tongue.

Stiles actually whimpered, legs slipping down from around Derek’s waist, back arching and hands leaving Derek’s hair, fingers dragging down the already damp skin of his back and shoving confidently down his pants.  They were skin to skin, one of Stiles’ hands grasping his ass and yanking him close and the other fisting his dick.

Derek hadn’t expected the bold move, felt winded by it and unsteady.  He planted his other hand up on the counter and concentrated on nothing more than driving his hips up into the loose circle of Stiles’ fingers.  He was tempted to add his grip to Stiles’, to make him more definite about it but it was clearly what Stiles wanted him to do, the way his eyes were dancing, and Derek had to wonder if they were in some kind of sexual tête-à-tête without him knowing it.  Stiles trying to prove he could play Derek like a fiddle before Derek could do the same to him. 

Derek didn’t care who won so long as Stiles kept it up.  His pants had slipped down enough that the wet head of his cock was visible between the splay of Stiles’ fingers and Stiles licked his lip as he stared down at it.  Though Derek had known this was having just as much of an effect on him, it was nice to see it somewhere other than his dick.

He found Stiles’ open, groaning mouth with his own, needing to be closer to him, and he watched his long eyelashes flutter before his eyes closed too and he was surging into Stiles with everything he had.  Their lips dragged against each other’s, messy, wet and hot and Stiles’ fingers firmed up around Derek’s dick.  Finally.  Their mouths were a tangle of tongues, of panting breaths and it was all fast, desperate necking while – in contrast – Stiles was stroking him with slow pulls, as though wanting him to feel every second of it and the more Derek tried to thrust into it, the slower Stiles went.

His fingers pointed down towards the base of Derek’s cock, gripping tighter when he reached it before coming back up and using the rub of the heel of his palm or the swipe of his thumb over the head and then diving back down again, slow, slow, slow.  Derek wanted to kill him, or build a monument to him. 

Definitely nothing in between though. 

When he dipped down lower, further than the base and rubbed the pads of his fingers against Derek’s ball sac, knocked a knee against Derek’s to make him spread his legs wider and stroked nice and slow over his perineum, Derek was sure.  Definitely the monument.  He could murder him later, after he’d finally come.  It was possible that Stiles felt his balls draw up even before he did and he was so fucking close, hips stuttering independent of him, when he felt Stiles’ hand pull out of his pants. 

Derek snarled at him before he could stop himself. 

Stiles offered him an unrepentant smirk.  The confidence of it thrown off by the heave of his chest and the breathless way he got out,  “You want to come like this?”  HIs eyebrows jumped, challenging.

Derek’s eyes tracked Stiles’, considering, shot down to the wet shine on his lips.  His back was still bowed, hips arching in, and Derek knew he wanted more than a quick orgasm in his hallway.  He trailed a thumb across Stiles’ lower lip, down his neck, over his bare chest and admitted, licking his own lip, “No.”

Derek backed up a few steps and Stiles’ back gracefully slipped off the beam it’d been flush with so he could stand up straight.  His eyebrows rose higher, questioning this time.  Derek ignored him in favor of carefully unbuttoning his shirt.  He didn’t rip out of it, strip it off, instead he fumbled with clumsy fingers over slippery buttons, inexpertly revealing more and more skin.

Stiles didn’t seem to notice the ineptitude, only licked his lip and pressed his palm flat to Derek’s chest, moving down it as he got the buttons undone like a race he didn’t care to win.  The last one was still fastened when Stiles rotated his hand and shoved it down Derek’s pants again.  Derek bucked into his grip, Stiles’ wrist straining back against that last fastening while he stroked him.

“You keep teasing me,” he panted out against the bridge of Derek’s ear, biting down hard and making Derek groan, “and I won’t be able to resist making you come apart right here.”

It took all the self-restraint Derek had, but he managed to pull Stiles’ hand out of his pants, lift him up so his balls were pressed tight to the tip of Derek’s cock and carry him back to his bedroom.  He tossed Stiles down on the mattress hard enough that he bounced a little.  He barely wasted a second, hooking a finger into the heel of his socks and pulling off his shoes along with them.  Then he was rolling down his tights without finesse.

His cock sprung up from them and Derek was drawn in by the dark hair, the thick vein that ran up the underside. 

“Fuck, what do I have to do to make you  _move_ ,” Stiles growled, words gravelly and impatient. 

Derek blinked, stumbling back into action, not realizing he’d been frozen and  _staring_.  Stiles wrapped one of those large hands around his cock and started stroking and Derek had to stop him doing that.  He scrambled over to the drawer of his nightstand, where there was definitely lube but no condom.  The last thing he would’ve expected himself to be doing though was having sex with a stranger.  Derek held up the tube of lube, hoping he wasn’t grimacing.  “I don’t have—”

Stiles’ eyebrows drew down, annoyed and orbiting close to a glower.  “Of-fucking-course not,” he muttered darkly under his breath and smoothly rolled out of the bed, popping up – dick included – and stalking out. 

Derek felt like something inside of him had calcified and he was just shifting gear into full-on panic and self-loathing when Stiles breezed back in and tossed a condom at his head.  Derek caught it by reflex and Stiles sunk back down onto the bed as though there hadn’t been any heart-stopping interruption. 

Derek blinked at him, choked by a sudden rush of jealousy he distantly realized he had no right to.  It was not okay that Stiles simply  _had_  condoms in his bag though, that maybe he’d been planning to go off and fuck the curly-haired kid tonight before Derek intervened.  Well.  If that _had_ been his plan, Derek was going to make sure he couldn’t even remember that guy’s  _name_  by the time they were through. 

He growled under his breath, dragging Stiles down the bed by his hips and up onto the rise of his thighs.  It was just what he’d imagined when Stiles had been onstage, Derek between his spread thighs and fucking into him.  Granted it was only with his lubed fingers but the gut-punched sounds and gasps of sharp air perfectly matched what he had expected of him.

Derek rested his thumb at Stiles’ hole, pressing but not breaching.  Stiles didn’t whine or mewl, he  _snarled_  and arced up under him, demanding.  He groaned low and spine-ripplingly deep when Derek pressed in with his first two fingers.  He twisted into Stiles and Stiles twisted with them, torso stretching and shoulders digging harder into the mattress.  Derek rested the thumb of his free hand on Stiles’ collarbone, fingers curling slightly around the side of his throat.  He moved it carefully up the arch of his neck, thumb pressing slightly into his adam’s apple before coasting up to rest on the tip of his chin, keeping his head tilted back.  He looked utterly  _lost_ , eyes fluttering closed, chest heaving and hips cresting back into the thrust of Derek’s fingers.

Derek almost wished he had more patience to enjoy it but his cock was throbbing and he was in real danger of coming before he even managed to get inside Stiles.  He more tugged and yanked at the button and zipper of his pants than undid and unzipped them but eventually the fabric gave way and he was able to drag them and his boxer briefs down.  Stiles shot him a glare when he pulled out his fingers to roll on the condom.

Derek leaned over him, one hand balled into a fist next to his shoulder and puffing out breaths as he held the base of his dick with the other, trying to steady himself.  “Ready?” he asked, tracking Stiles’ gaze with his own.

Stiles rolled his eyes, used his elbows and the balls of his feet to shift himself back and onto Derek’s dick.  “Fuck,  _yes_ ,” he hissed out, eyes closing again and expression blissed out and Derek was glad he had a grip on himself because it was all that had stopped him from coming right there. 

It was a moment or so before he felt he could let go and then he was simply enjoying the feeling of being as deep inside of Stiles as it was possible to be, his lower abdomen pressed right up against Stiles’ ass.  He set his other hand parallel to the one at Stiles’ shoulder and pulled partway out to thrust back in, building up a steady and slow rhythm.  He hoped Stiles believed it was because he was taking his time rather than a strict necessity so he could try to get himself under control.

Stiles went with it for all of a minute before he was dragging nails down Derek’s back, reaching as low as his arms would go and dragging Derek in to thrust hard, to  _fuck_  him like he’d promised he would.

Derek gave in to the desire to pound into Stiles’ ass, even knowing that he was effectively cutting this short.  He fucked into Stiles so their flesh slapped together, ground into him relentlessly while he was buried deep, thumbed patiently at his nipple in firm circles and tongued into his mouth messily, sloppily like the rest of it.  It wasn’t until Stiles’ calves wrapped around his lower back, heels digging into his ass cheeks that he came, collapsing down on top of him and panting hard, muttering under his breath with a wild sort of laughter he didn’t recognize, “You fuck just like you dance.”  It took him a few extra seconds to catch up to the knowledge that while he had finished, Stiles hadn’t.

His hips were still mindlessly swaying forward and back and he was working on lifting himself up, heart pounding, head fuzzy and limbs shaky when he felt Stiles’ hand smooth over the sweat on the back of his neck.  It rested there a moment, fitted perfectly to the curve of his hot skin before it glided up into his even sweatier hair and pressed Derek’s forehead into the curve of his neck where it had fallen.  “Slow down,” he said breathlessly.

Derek huffed out a breath against his skin, said more tiredly than cheekily, “You didn’t want me to make love to you.”

Stiles snorted.  “Don’t want you to have a heart attack trying to get me off either.”  His nails scraped lightly over Derek’s scalp and Derek could feel himself starting to breathe more normally, heartbeat slowing down.  “Don’t push it,” he said.  His mouth brushed against the tips of Derek’s hair.  “I know you don’t do this much.  Touch people like this.”  Derek didn’t even have a chance to feel shocked before he went on.  “Those girls on the street, even with your sister, you kept your distance.  Isolated yourself.  ‘Fuck’ doesn’t mean ‘rush,’ so don’t feel like you can’t enjoy this.” 

Derek swallowed, propping himself up, and let his fingertips stray down to brush against the ink of Stiles’ tattoos, tracing the intersecting lines of the patterned circle on his side.  He drew in a sharp breath against the tingle of their skin dragging together and then Derek was easing his fingers back inside of Stiles and Stiles was gasping and lifting up onto his toes.

Derek shifted down between his thighs, almost lazily fingering him as he let the thumb of his other hand drag up the vein of his dick, pulling it back and sucking the head into his mouth.  Stiles’ eyes rolled back and Derek kept his gaze trained on Stiles’ face as he tongued at his cock, watched the way the mole on his cheek would pull into his mouth when he dragged in a sharp cut of air each time Derek hit his prostate, the way his eyelids would flutter when he’d brush against his sac with his thumb or pinky, the way his cheeks would flush when he sucked particularly hard.  He was responsive and gorgeous and when he finally came in Derek’s mouth, it felt like a victory.

He came down from it slowly and Derek sucked at his softening cock gently as Stiles’ hips relaxed back down into the bed, chest heaving but evening out and breaths coming in less of a desperate stutter.  Stiles weakly pushed him off by his forehead when it got to be too much and yawned.  He made a gummy sound in the back of his throat and stretched.  “That was pretty damn good.”  He cocked an eyebrow.  “Though I would’ve liked to have come on your dick.” 

Derek swallowed nervously, propped his hip up next to Stiles’ and laid down at his side, tying off the condom he’d all but forgotten about in his eagerness to get Stiles off.  “Depending on how much of a hurry you’re in,” he said carefully, looking down at his own soft cock, “I’m betting I could make that happen.”

Stiles smiled lazily and shook his head.  Derek felt his stomach drop.  He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth as he yawned again and scooted to the edge of the bed.  He tossed over his shoulder, “You got anything edible here?”

“No,” Derek admitted, hating himself for it in that moment.  Stiles sat up fully and Derek saw the tattoo on his back that he had only caught a glimpse of on stage.  It was more expansive than anything on his front was, which was why Derek had been so sure of  _colors_ , and it covered nearly the whole of his torso.  It was one huge tree that climbed the length of his spine, twisting and curving and each segment of it, rising from root to corresponding branch in complex pathways, was comprised of a different, vibrant hue.  The colors weren't perfectly delineated though and would splash into each other and apart and somehow seemed to fade as they reached the tippy-top of the branches.  There was a mix of bare and leafy, of gnarled and healthy and the roots somehow seemed to dig  _in_  at the bottom.

Derek hadn’t even realized he was walking his hands all over it until Stiles’ shoulders hunched together in a shiver, the ripple of the blades under his skin making the leaves look like they were waving.  Near the bottom was a wolf, stalking between the large roots.  At first Derek thought it was black, black as the crow over Stiles’ heart, but then Stiles shifted forward and it looked a deeper purple in that cast of light.  Derek tilted his head back further only to have it glare back a navy blue from that angle.

He finally let his hand drop only to have it reach back up when Stiles stood, his four fingers fitting to the tattooed claw marks on the back on his thigh and dragging down the path of them.  Stiles’ tree danced with another shiver and he took a step away, which was enough to make Derek’s mouth stop feeling like it was cemented together so he could say, “Where are you going?” 

Stiles shrugged, having found his tights and was tugging them back on.  “Out.  Food.  Away.”  He turned around, offered another bounce of his shoulders.  “All of the above.”

Derek felt tongue-tied and like he was quickly running out of time to make the offer when he finally strangled out, “Mind if I go with you?”

Stiles shrugged again, not looking like he cared much one way or the other and Derek hunted for something in his closet that would consist more of a ‘dressed down’ look than what he’d worn to the theater, since that had only seemed to make Stiles think less of him.  He found a pair of gray sweats from high school that said ‘Beacon Hills Lacrosse’ down the side and a plain navy hooded jacket that wasn’t anywhere near as faded as Stiles’.

He grabbed his keys off the counter and found Stiles redressed, duffle on his shoulder and biting the nail of the index finger in his mouth as he waited by the door.  His eyes flicked down Derek’s outfit and he laughed.  “Dude, even your casual wear is for a douchey rich guy sport.” 

Derek froze, not sure if Stiles wanted him to change or something else when he kicked off the wall he had his sneaker up against and unzipped Derek’s hoodie some to show off his chest.  He twisted one of the strings around his finger and huffed.  “You’ve never even washed this, have you?  It looks brand fucking new.”  He nuzzled into Derek’s neck, pulled the zipper all the way down and bit a nail into one of his nipples.  Derek jerked against him with a gasp.  “You look hot, even when you dress like one of us peasants.”

He took a few steps back and Derek grabbed his forearm, pulled him back in and said gruffly, “I don’t think you’re a peasant.”  He shoved his keys into his pocket so he could wrap both his arms around Stiles and tell him, “I don’t care about money.  I don’t care if you have it or not.”

Stiles snorted, shook his head.  “You know who says shit like that?  People who have it.”  His brows had drawn low and he looked less amused now, more angry.

Derek swallowed, shrugged helplessly.  “I’d rather be poor and have my family alive and well than have all this.  This doesn’t mean anything.”

Stiles bit his lower lip, seemed to be warring with himself over whether to keep his mouth shut or not.  It took him another few seconds to decide.  “I get it.  What you’re saying, I do.  But don’t try to discount all this.  Don’t pretend that it  _doesn’t mean anything_  because it does.  It means you don’t have a fucking worry in the world, okay.  You don’t work, I could see that much within five minutes of walking in here, but you don’t have to twist yourself into knots wondering how you’re going to keep your water running, your apartment lit, how you’re gonna pay off—Just don’t pretend like all of this is nothing because it’s not _nothing_ , all right?  It’s fucking  _security_.  You don’t know what some people would give for that.”

“Their whole family?” Derek demanded in a growl, eyes narrowed and starting to feel himself tense, getting worked into a state by Stiles’ words.

Stiles jutted out his chin defiantly and snarled, “Yeah, maybe.”  He was stomping out of Derek’s door before he could even ask him what the fuck he meant by  _that_.  

Derek snatched up his wallet and raced out after him, catching up to him where he was angrily waiting for the elevator, hands shoved purposefully into his joey pocket.  Derek tugged on his elbow to get him to look around.  He got the feeling there was a lot Stiles wasn’t saying here, a lot Derek didn’t understand and therefore couldn’t argue with and he decided to let it go rather than keep hammering away at it until they couldn’t stand to look at each other.  “Hey,” he said seriously, “I’m not trying to pick a fight with you.  I don’t think you can really  _ever_  say the same.”

The set of Stiles’ shoulders relaxed some and he pulled in a deep breath.  “You’re not far from the M Line, right?” he said abruptly. 

Derek almost never took the subway but he’d been given a pamphlet by his real estate agent when he’d moved in.  He’d studied that and a Chinese take-out menu that’d been slipped under his door that first week, holed up in his empty apartment and pretending he didn’t hear the phone ring.  “Yeah, about five blocks over.”

Stiles nodded.  “There’s an all right pizza joint not that far, greasy but cheap.”  He stuttered for a second before deciding not to correct himself and point out  _again_  how of course money was no object to Derek and plowed on.  “Open twenty-four hours too.”

Derek nodded back.  “Sounds good.”  And it did too.  Really anything with Stiles sounded good though.

The streets were less crowded so late, but by no means empty.  It was the same with the subway.  The car Stiles ushered them into had plenty of empty seats together but Stiles took a pole anyway.  Derek huddled next to him at it, instinctually caught him around the middle when the car lurched to a stop a few minutes later.  He winced to himself, waiting for the inevitable lecture about how Stiles could take care of himself and that the last thing he needed was for Derek to appoint himself in charge of looking after him.

He was nearly shocked stupid when Stiles simply ended up shaking his head, almost like he couldn’t believe Derek was  _real_.  He wore a soft smile and leaned into him, hand tugging at the side of Derek’s hood and pulling him into a thorough kiss.  His lip ring was cold from the short walk to the subway station and Derek sucked in a gasp of a breath at the feel of it.  Stiles used the opportunity to let his tongue dance along the edge of his lower lip before slipping into his mouth.  

Derek’s hands tightened on his waist and on the metal pole, yanking Stiles closer while their kiss drifted between steamy and lackadaisical by turns.  Stiles broke away first, thumb and index finger dragging from the bridge of Derek’s ear down to the lobe before letting go completely.  “This is us,” he said with the hint of a grin.

Derek blinked at him, having to convince his fingers to uncurl from where he’d anchored them before he could get his feet to move. 

Stiles expertly navigated them two blocks over to a tiny, ill-lit pizza place.  Its sign was metal and uneven and completely unreadable this time of night.  The ‘OPEN’ in its window was only half-lit so it said ‘EN’ from the sidewalk.  Stiles reached for his hand, curling his fingers around Derek’s as he led them inside.  Derek felt clumsy and slow but he managed to hold Stiles’ back.  Stiles ordered two slices of cheese without even consulting with Derek and then sat them down at one of the three empty high tables.  Derek’s stool squeaked and the table was slanted slightly.

“Do you live around here?” Derek asked him as the tired-looking proprietor smacked down their paper plates in front of them.  The pizza slice overflowed on both ends of it.

Stiles shrugged.  “Depends on how you define ‘around,’” he answered, without answering.

Derek heard the unspoken direction to butt the fuck out and decided to take heart from how well Stiles seemed to know the city.  Which meant he most likely lived here full time, maybe even only a subway ride away from Derek too.  That had to be a point in Derek’s favor, close by and devoted to worshipping Stiles’ dick.

Stiles loaded up his slice with parmesan cheese and hot pepper and ate like he was afraid someone was going to try to take it away from him.  He popped Derek’s crust into his mouth too when he realized he wasn’t going to finish it.  He tapped his greasy fingers against the table and said thoughtfully, “This wasn’t bad, y’know?”  Derek had already left money on the table and Stiles glanced down at it with a grin, then back up at Derek, eyes dancing.  “Thanks for the fuck,” he said seriously, “and for the grub.” 

“Yeah,” Derek agreed feebly, feeling somewhat dazed.  Somehow he hadn’t really expected this to come to an end and now here they were, butting up against it.  Stiles was already out the door by the time Derek got to his feet.  “Stiles?” 

Stiles turned back around, still walking away, teeth white and grinning in the dark.  “Yeah, man?” he asked carelessly. 

Derek’s confidence shriveled up.  He knew what this was, he’d known from the moment Stiles had asked if he’d wanted to fuck him.  This was a moment in time, not the start of something.  He’d only embarrass himself by asking for more now.  He tightened his hand into a fist in the pocket of his jacket, mouth pursing with it and said, “Look after yourself?”

Stiles laughed, winked.  “Trust me, I am.”  He shrugged.  “No one else is gonna do it, right?” 

Derek nodded to him before he could open his mouth and offer himself up for the job.  He turned away after Stiles rounded the corner and walked slowly back to the subway station, feeling off-kilter and somehow more lonely than he could ever remember being. 

His hand already tingled as though to remind him of how empty it was and he did the best he could to drown out the sensation by twisting it up in the fabric of his sweats.

* * *

He woke late in the day, curled over on one side of his mattress like he was trying to make room for someone who didn’t need it.  He lifted his head, frowned at the undisturbed strip of sunlight next to him and padded across his room in nothing but his baggy lacrosse sweats.  He rubbed at his eyes, yawned and scratched at the dark line of hair under his navel as he made his way over to his coffee maker. 

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Laura holding a mug between her hands at his kitchen counter like she’d been waiting for him to emerge.  She took a sip, smirking around the lip of the cup and eyes cataloguing every bit of him.  He hoped there wasn’t any evidence of what he’d gotten up to last night for her to run with.  He didn’t even want to imagine what she’d have to say about it.

Derek scowled at her, pulled down his own mug and waited for his coffee to brew.

She smiled sharply, bounced her eyebrows and asked with forced nonchalance, “Did you enjoy yourself, slumming it with your ballet boy?”

Derek felt his hackles rise, shoulders tightening.  He tensed over the word choice, if anything Stiles had been slumming it with  _him._   “Don’t talk about him like that,” he snarled softly, too early for there to be much heat behind it but still unarguably serious.

Laura narrowed her eyes on him, gaze dropping again to his sweats with a raise of her lip.  Her mouth pursed.  “Derek, don’t tell me you’ve actually gotten invested in this child?”  Derek ignored her and she rolled her eyes, said as though it was obvious, “He’s using you.” 

Derek sneered right back at her.  “He hasn’t asked me for  _anything_.”

“Not yet,” she said with a scoff, utterly undeterred – in fact she acted as though Derek was only helping to prove her point as she set her cup down.  “It’s called luring you into a false sense of security and every good con artist does it.”  She reached over the stool next to her and dragged out a folded newspaper from her bag, unrolling it onto the counter in front of him.  It was already flipped to the review of Stiles’ ballet.  “Besides,” she added smugly, “I’m hardly the worst when it comes to badmouthing him.”  She tapped the article with a manicured nail as though Derek might’ve missed it otherwise.

Derek tore it off the counter and scanned through it, grip on the pages growing tighter and tighter the more he read.  At least he finally knew the story of it.  It was a tale of unrequited love all around, Stiles in love with the girl who was in love with the boy who loved another.  To woo her, he made a deal with the fates who exploited a loophole in his request and took his life.  That was the dance that had so captured Derek’s attention.  And one the reviewer did not understand at all.  He called it all kinds of things, ‘a pointless misuse of violence and indecency’ was absolutely the  _nicest_  way he phrased it throughout.

Derek was practically shaking by the time he was done with it and, instead of handing it back to Laura, he tossed it directly into the trash.  “They’re completely ignorant as to the meaning of it,” he spat, because they were.  They hadn’t understood it at all, how pure it was for  _what_  it was.  That, yes, it was hostile and bitter and sad but that that had a purpose – a place – too.  That Stiles’ dance hadn’t wanted to pretend that his cause was a noble one and that it would all turn up roses in the end.  It had been selfish and defiant and wrong and everything that’s never given any due, the darker truths of human nature and it was being insulted for that.  “They didn’t understand it and yet they still feel confident passing judgment on it.”  Derek scrubbed at his stubble, ground out again, “They don’t get it.”

Laura was watching him carefully, eyes tracking him, before she said starkly, “But you do.”

It wasn’t a question but Derek confirmed it anyway.  “Yes.”

“So,” Laura began cautiously, tapping her nails against the counter.  It made the hair on the back of Derek’s neck raise.  “What’d you do with him?” she asked, curiosity badly hidden.  Then as though realizing she’d given herself away, she added sourly, “Get a tattoo, shoot heroin, rob someone?”

Derek felt hate curdle in his gut.  She was exactly everything Stiles had treated him like he would be in that moment.  Superficial, judgmental, small.  “You think you’re so much better than him,” he growled under his breath, “and for what?  Because you can afford the Upper West Side and designer fashion?”  He turned away from her, acting as though his coffee needed his attention so he wouldn’t have to look at her.  His voice was small and it shook when he told her, “You’re only proving everything he said about you.” 

She was cold and vicious when she spoke again.  And  _her_  voice shook too.  “Enjoy tearing me down, did you?”

Derek rolled his eyes, stirring sugar into his coffee.  “The world doesn’t revolve around you, Laura.  We didn’t talk about you once after you left.”  It was mostly true.  He turned back to her, blew on his coffee and realized his mistake quickly.

Her gaze was sharp, hardened when she saw she had his back.  “Oh yeah, and what did you two talk about then?  Your whole sordid history come up, did it?”

Bile rose in Derek's throat.  He should’ve expected it; her fallback when she was backed into a corner was always to bring up the fire.  To try to quash him,  _use_  him the way she was claiming Stiles would, the way she said their uncle was looking to.  Because that was the only way she knew how to deal with him, to make sure he felt as guilty as he deserved to after he’d taken  _her_  parents,  _her_  siblings,  _her_  family away from her.  “Yes,” he hissed out.  “I did tell him and do you know what, Laura?  He  _didn’t care_.  He didn’t spend every waking moment afterwards trying to make me feel as miserable as he felt I should.”

Laura’s hands looked almost claw-like the way they scratched across the counter as she tightened them.  “So he’s a fucking sociopath then?”

Derek was so far beyond backing down now.  He’d finally called Laura out on her favorite retort, the argument she always used when she wanted her way.  So sure he was  _lucky_  to have as much of her acceptance as he did, that he deserved a thousand times worse than what she gave, but it was a tactic as much as a real denouncement.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, vibrating with his own daring.  “You don’t know anything.”

“I know what you did, Derek,” she hissed back, expression contorting to something crueler and cheeks flooding red. 

Derek screwed up his eyes, hands clenching into fists at his sides, and he said through a tight jaw, “I made a mistake.  I trusted someone I shouldn’t have.  I didn’t set that fire, Laura.  I didn’t do anything that anyone else couldn’t have done.”  His eyes wrenched back open and he accused, “You didn’t know what she was any more than I did, or Peter, or mom or dad or  _anyone._   I didn’t kill them so stop trying to put the gasoline in my hand.”  Laura recoiled so sincerely that she looked like she had been slapped.  “You say Peter is trying to use me but every time you want me to bow to your whims, you throw the fire back in my face.  That isn’t fair and until—until you can find a new argument, I don’t want you here.”  He grabbed the jacket he’d stripped himself of inside the door last night off the table, finding his wallet and keys underneath it, feeling like a whirlwind of emotion, barely in control of his limbs.  He jammed on the shoes by his door and said coldly over his shoulder, unwilling to look back at Laura, “I expect you to be gone when I get back.”

As soon as he got to the elevator, he knew exactly where he was going.  He had no idea if Stiles would be at the theater, but he knew that was where he was ending up.  It probably should worry him, that after one night he was already running to Stiles like he was some kind of safe haven.  But he  _knew_  that Stiles didn’t want anything from him.  He had no expectations when it came to Derek and that was surprisingly freeing.

A quick look at the marquee showed there wasn’t a show that day but Derek didn’t want to go home just yet.  He wanted to at least give Laura some time to clear out before he headed back, and she could be impressively stubborn about that when she felt like it.  He walked around to the back, where he had first met Stiles, and thought about swinging by the pizza place Stiles had taken him to last night but he wasn’t entirely sure he could find his way back there in the daylight and the crowds that came with it.

He leaned back against the brick wall of the theater and breathed deeply, trying not to let himself focus too long on what had just happened between him and Laura because he knew, if he did, he would break down and apologize to her.  And he wasn’t entirely sure he was wrong.  But she was his only ally, the only family he had left, by default the only friend too.  He couldn’t afford to go around alienating her.

Which she probably knew, and used to her advantage.  He scowled to himself, determined to stop letting people use him.  Sister or no.

“Derek?”

Derek nearly swallowed his tongue.  It was the curly-haired kid – Isaac – from the night before.  Derek hadn’t even heard the door open and barely had time to be surprised Isaac had remembered his name when a familiar voice was joining his, Stiles spilling out from behind the door and adjusting his wrist warmers as he talked at the person behind him.  He froze when he turned around and saw Derek, interrupted himself with an awkward, “Hey.” 

“Hi,” Derek said back in a strangled sort of voice.

Stiles squinted at him.  He licked his lip, worrying at his lip ring with his teeth, considering.  He turned back to his troupe finally, waving off a floppy-haired kid who was shorter than him by a few inches.  Derek vaguely recognized him as one of the supporting dancers.  Next to him was the brunette who was one of the stars of the show, tall and thin and hair in a tight, high bun.  Stiles walked over to him carefully, hands in the pockets of his own sweats as he took in the fact that Derek was wearing the same clothes he had been yesterday.  He shrugged his shoulders.  “You wanna get out of here?”

Derek nodded quickly, as though the offer might be revoked if he didn’t pounce on it. 

Stiles fell into step with him, walking them in the direction of what Derek knew was a subway station.  He didn’t ask any questions, even as he swiped his MetroCard and led Derek out onto the platform and Derek realized he might have his own shit he was dealing with.  Like that review.

Derek watched him for a moment, gauging, and then said gruffly but with fierceness to it, “You shouldn’t listen to those reviews, they’re bullshit.” 

Stiles removed his thumb from his mouth where he was chewing on the nail and chuckled.  “Oh, dude, I don’t,” he said, as though the very idea was laughable.  “Stopped reading them a long time ago.  The only people who are going to understand it, they don’t write for magazines or newspapers.”  He looked over at Derek, said seriously, “They’re shattered on the inside, you know, just trying not to move too much or breathe too hard lest they cut themselves.”  He knocked Derek’s elbow with his own.  “Never would’ve expected you to be one of them.”

Derek must’ve looked bad if Stiles was trying to be nice to him, it explained why he hadn’t blown Derek off at least.  He hunched his shoulders and asked unassumingly, “Can we go to your place?”  He didn’t want to go back to his apartment, not until Laura and the awful feeling the fight with her had left behind were sure to be gone. 

Stiles shrugged.  “Yeah, I guess so,” he said with a hint of unease.

That same unease stuck with him until Derek entered his messy, grungy one bedroom with barely a look around, shoved him up against the door and stuck his tongue down his throat.  They fucked up against the door, at least until Derek’s strength gave out and he propped Stiles’ ass up on the edge of his sink so he could finally come inside him.

Stiles practically unraveled around him after he’d jerked himself off while Derek was still hard inside him, slipping down to the floor rather than flopping the two steps away onto his bed.  His dresser was shoved up against the side of his mattress in the far end of the room, the only way those two things could fit there, making the bottom two drawers unusable.  There were clothes everywhere, no closet.  A sink in his ‘kitchen’ and an unplugged mini-fridge.

There didn’t seem to be a bathroom.  That supposition was reinforced by Stiles’ toothbrush in a glass next to his rusted metal sink.

Derek didn’t care about any of it.  He was with Stiles, and that was the only part that mattered.  He lifted him up with an arm around his waist when his limbs no longer felt stringy and dropped Stiles down onto his thin mattress, which had a single blanket and pillow on it and wasn’t on a bed frame.  Stiles agreeably rolled them both up in the blanket and curled into Derek’s chest, yawning.  “ _Fuck_ , you’re good at that.”

Derek brushed his mouth against Stiles’ unruly hair and breathed back honestly, “You, too.”

* * *

He woke up alone, arm spread out beneath the only pillow and one leg of his pants still wrapped around his ankle.  He yawned, scrubbing at his face and sat up, wondering if he should get dressed and leave or wait for Stiles to come back.  He wasn’t ready to move yet no matter what he decided to go with and flopped back down, stretching.

He must’ve dozed again because his eyelids fluttered back open at the sound of the door’s hinges and Stiles wandering back in, wearing the same thing he’d been wearing earlier – before Derek had divested him of it – earbuds in his ears.  It felt like only a few minutes had passed from when Derek had originally woke up.

He suppressed another yawn and said, “I thought you’d left.” 

“I did,” Stiles agreed, collapsing back down on the mattress next to him.  “And then I came back,” he said smartly.  He walked two fingers up Derek’s chest and asked with a detached sort of curiosity, “Feel less like shit?”

“Yes,” Derek admitted.  His eyes slipped over the sweat beaded on Stiles’ forehead, the ruddiness of his cheeks – he’d probably been out for a run, the fullness of his lips and the inhuman length of his eyelashes.  He swallowed.  “Thank you for—”

“Yeah,” Stiles said dismissively, kicking the blanket off of Derek’s waist and straddling him.  He rested his hands on Derek’s chest and finished, “how ‘bout you just fuck me again instead of whatever it is you’re working through right here?” 

Derek found he didn’t want to argue with that at all.

* * *

He ended up waiting outside the theater the next afternoon too.  He really had nothing better to do and he was starting to get this ache up under his ribs when he went too long without seeing Stiles.  He and Laura still weren’t speaking and Peter had taken their falling out as a sign that he should start putting the screws to Derek harder, as though he was more malleable without Laura’s influence around.

He was leaning against one of the crates outside the doors when Isaac exited through them.  He rolled his eyes with a huff when he saw Derek and squinted against the sunlight.  “He’s not coming out any time soon,” he informed Derek coolly.

Derek shrugged.  He had no place else to be.

Isaac sighed, like he’d run across a stray kitten and now had to decide whether to leave it outside or take it in.  He kept the door held open as he debated and said, “Listen, he’s practicing, trying out something new, you know?  You might not want to wait.” 

“I don’t mind waiting.”  He kind of got the feeling Isaac was trying to run him off, and Derek wasn’t about to let that happen.  He didn’t have any expectations about what he and Stiles were and Stiles seemed to be willing to entertain Derek’s need to fuck him regularly and enthusiastically.  He was  _going_  to stick around for as long as that was the case. 

Isaac sighed again, more heartfelt this time and said, “Fine.  You better come inside then, I guess.  I feel like you’re gonna get sunstroke or hypothermia or some other weather-related malady out here.”

Derek couldn’t help but think that Isaac’s preoccupation with unfortunate weather was the most likely explanation for his ubiquitous scarf.  He didn’t say so though, just ducked under his arm as Isaac pointed down the hall. 

“He’s two doors down and I’m sure he’ll be  _thrilled_  that you’re here,” he said sarcastically.  And, well, he was probably right about that.  Stiles always looked some level of pleased and annoyed every time Derek reappeared, like he’d thought he’d got rid of him and didn’t know how to feel over the fact that he hadn’t.

“You’re going to have to find a way to get more of a lift if you want this to work.  Though I’d be just as happy watching you crack your skull open on stage if you can’t manage it,” said a snide voice Derek didn’t know from down the way Isaac had pointed.  It carried down the empty hall easily.  When he rounded the door, he recognized the man speaking.  It was the lead guy from the ballet, the one who seemed to wear a permanent sneer like it was a fashion statement of some kind.

He was blond and he looked like everything Stiles hated, spoiled and pompous and superior. 

Stiles was breathing hard, dressed only in his tights and he got an inch away from the guy’s face, snarling, “I bet you would, Jackson, you’re definitely that much of a dick.  Besides,” he smirked rather maliciously, “it would mean that the only person whose talent eclipses yours was finally out of the way.”

Jackson – apparently – raised his lip higher and his hand lifted to Stiles’ throat, not touching him but miming it.  “You are so fucking full of yourself, Stilinski,” he hissed and the space between them was rapidly dwindling. 

Derek cleared his throat before they could kill each other.  Or fuck each other.  He genuinely hadn’t been sure which way that was leaning, only knew that the air around them was charged with it.  And, either way, he  _was_  sure he wanted to stop it. 

Stiles glanced over at him, doing a double take when he saw it was Derek.  “What are you doing here?” he asked unkindly, nose wrinkling.

Derek shrugged, trying not to feel as small as Stiles was trying to make him.  “Isaac told me you’d be a while.  Said I should come in and wait.”

Jackson thankfully stole Stiles’ attention away again before he could chip away at Derek some more.  “What, you can’t do it with an audience?  You do know that’s kind of an integral part to this whole thing, right?”

Stiles’ eyes narrowed and Jackson walked back over to an iPod plugged into a dock and hit play.  A dupstep beat started up and Stiles shook out his hands by his sides from the far end of the room.  His nostrils flared once and then he was taking off. 

Derek would’ve expected it to lose some of its majesty, with how well he now knew that body and the person inside it.  He would’ve thought he’d have to look at it and see it as more of a production and less like the fluid magic it had been when he’d first seen it.  He barely even had time to feel a tugging sadness over the thought before he realized how little weight it held.  If anything, it inspired a  _greater_  sense of wonderment than before.  Now that he knew how hard and inflexible Stiles was in reality, to watch him like this… it almost felt like a privilege.

Though it was one he couldn’t enjoy.

Not now that he  _saw_  how punishing it was rather than only glimpsing the polished routine.  He’d only watched Stiles run through the whole thing twice by the time he was sure he never wanted to see it again.  For someone who made their living as a dancer, Stiles was remarkably careless with his own safety.  He plunged forward without even a mat beneath him, flipping and spinning and leaping and falling over hardwood floor.  He tumbled twice in the first attempt, both times hard enough that Derek worried he might not be able to simply spring back up. 

He was trying for some outrageous spin and often fell short of it, somersaulting back up with less and less pep the more times he dropped.  Jackson chuckled each time and Stiles’ expression grew progressively darker when he did, shaking himself out with more vehemence and cracking his neck before running through it again.

The second time he fell so hard that his elbow was already bruising by the time he got back up and he was spinning his wrist around after awkwardly landing on it.  Derek could hear each crack it made across the room and he cringed reflexively each time.   He hit his side on one of the more risky leaps and drew in a sharp, stabbing breath as he tried to get back up.  Jackson actually sauntered over on that occasion, grabbed his hand and yanked him upright again. 

Stiles pushed him off with a glare.  “I’ve got it,” he snarled.

Jackson raised his hands and backed up a step, smirking.

Stiles crossed an arm over his chest, pulling at it by the bicep to stretch it.  Then he did the same with the other.  He worried his lip and ran across the room to get up the speed and tried to execute two spins in midair without hitting the ground first.  He actually got through one and a half before the momentum failed him and he was landing hard on his feet, the ankle of his left rolling as he lost his balance.  He came down hard on his front and Jackson rolled his eyes, kneeling down next to him and snatching up Stiles’ foot into his lap.

It was the first time that Derek noticed he had a tattoo there too.  It was light, airy almost, a pale feather along the curve of his foot.  Jackson tested his ankle, pushing it back and pulling it forward and rotating it.  It took that long for Stiles to get into a sitting position again.  When he did, he kicked at the hands holding his foot and then winced at the way it’d pulled the muscle. 

Jackson clicked his tongue, still holding Stiles’ foot despite his attempt to get him to let go.  “Definitely sprained,” he said dismissively, sniffing.  “You’re gonna want to ice it.” 

Stiles snorted.  “Wow, that is brand new information,” he drawled mordantly.  “Thanks, Dr. Whittemore.”  Jackson dropped Stiles’ foot instantly and it fell carelessly into his lap.  Stiles raised his eyebrows knowingly and ran the pad of his foot up against Jackson’s lower abdomen, slowly dipping down while Jackson drew in a sharp breath.

Derek didn’t realize the low rumble of a growl was coming from him until both Stiles and Jackson turned to look at him.  Stiles hobbled up onto his feet and grinned at him rather breathlessly, utterly unrepentant.  “What’d you think?” 

Derek blinked at him.  “Is the falling down a part of it?”

Jackson laughed snidely and Derek felt a little bad for being so cutting about it but he wanted to hurt Stiles back for whatever the fuck that just was.  It was one thing to have no expectations when it came to them and entirely another to have Stiles’ sex life shoved in his face. 

Stiles glowered at him, flipping him off over his shoulder.  “Fuck you,” he said mulishly while he stumbled over to his duffle bag, pulling his sweatshirt out of it and tugging it on.  He lifted the strap onto his shoulder and Derek was at his side in an instant, pulling it away from him and dragging it up over his own head.  Stiles saluted to Jackson with his first two fingers and said, “Later, Captain Doucheface.”  He bounced his eyebrows twice in Derek’s direction, Jackson forgotten that fast, and challenged with a wide and cheeky smile, “Now what exactly do you think you can do with ice, fancy man?”

* * *

Derek would’ve camped out at Stiles’ if he’d thought for a second Stiles would’ve allowed it.  Stiles, who left and returned three times in the course of the next four hours and, each time, seemed to have  _no_  reaction to finding Derek still in his apartment.  Except to blow him or demand to be blown once he’d settled in again.

It wasn’t until Stiles had thrown a towel over his shoulder, sporting nothing but heather gray boxer briefs, toothbrush half-hanging out of his mouth and sandals on his feet that he finally said the words, “Whatever storm you’re trying to avoid colliding with by hiding out here?”  He perked his eyebrows.  “I think it’s either passed or you’re gonna have to face it, dude.” 

Derek knew he was right.

Stiles lifted the towel and shook it, mouth closing more firmly around the head of the toothbrush and Derek got the message: ‘Get the fuck out already.’  Though there didn’t seem to be any edge to it, more like a fond, if forceful nudge.

He took the subway rather than a cab, bumped into strangers in the cramped car with barely a glance at them, yawning and considering crawling back in bed as soon as he was home.  Somehow even though he’d spent all day in Stiles’, it had been far from relaxing.  Fucking Stiles was incredible, but punishing.  Seemed to be for everyone involved too.

He fumbled with his keys and the zipper of his hoodie as he entered his apartment, looking forward to shrugging out of it, when he heard a clatter from his living room and jerked his head up.  “Laura,” he said dumbly.

She was wearing a different outfit but that was the only indication he had that she hadn’t been waiting for him, unmoving, on his leather couch for the past few days.  Her hair was oily, makeup faded and she looked… She looked, for once, like she wasn’t donning a costume to get through the day.  She looked like his sister.  He barely remembered her face that way, creased with worry and sad in a way that had more to do with exhaustion than melancholy.

Her fingers toyed with the handle of the cup she’d set down on his coffee table and she pulled them into her lap, sat back like she didn’t know what to do with them.

Derek pulled his hoodie back up onto his shoulder but didn’t bother to re-zip, walking over and settling silently onto the ottoman across from her.  He watched her for a long time while she folded her fingers together, hair limp and falling into her face while she chewed the inside of her cheek, trying to find the start of the yarn she wanted to unravel.

Finally, after the silence between them almost seemed to have formed a solid around their still bodies, she said, “It wasn’t about trying to hurt you or to make you feel responsible or guilty or any of that.”  Her gaze sliced up to his, imploring Derek to believe her. 

She sighed, leaned forward with her elbows on her spread knees and it was as though she was trying to grasp water in her closed fists the way she desperately groped for the words.  “Derek.”  She stopped, bit her lip and her tone went less harsh, more weathered.  “After.  After everything?”

Derek canted his head to the side, entreating her on wordlessly and she deflated a little, less rigid, less unsure.

“You wanted to stand still.  Like if you just didn’t point yourself in a direction, that would be the same as never having to make another choice again.  You stopped.  You bought this place and you hid out in it and, no matter what I said to you or  _how_  I said it, you didn’t seem to hear me.”  Her fingers trembled and she curled them under her palms on her knees.  “So I started making the choices.  I chose the—” she barely stuttered, “the caskets and what of mom and dad’s to sell and what to invest and I shouldered all of it, all of the choices, I made them so that you wouldn’t have to and,” she swallowed, looked up at him like she wanted to reach out for him but there was a veritable  _ocean_  of space between them, “I swear to you, I tried to understand how alone you wanted to be when all I wanted was to grab you close.  I tried not to feel abandoned.  I tried to take care of you, and I knew that retreating like you were wasn’t healthy so I tried to open you up again too.  But you wouldn’t listen to me.”

She pulled in a deep breath, almost like she had to work herself up to admitting what she’d done as easily as blinking only yesterday.  “At least not until I started mentioning the fire.  And I knew it was guilt that got you moving again but I figured that was okay, for now,” she said carefully, Derek overly aware of the smacking sound her lips made and where she chose to draw breath because he was listening to her that intently.  Because he never really had before, he’d barely even thought of her outside of an extension of himself and what he projected her thoughts on him to be, “whatever it took to get you to participate in the world again.  So I rationalized it, for a long time.  I was your big sister and I only wanted what was best for you.  I was only helping you make choices you should’ve been making for yourself in the first place.  And maybe that was true once, or maybe it was delusion from the very beginning, but somewhere along the way, it stopped being about you.”

Derek’s gaze snapped back to hers.  He hadn’t expected her to admit to that.  He hadn’t even been entirely sure she’d  _realized_  that her endeavor, at some point, had become at least somewhat narcissistic.  He certainly hadn’t realized his own selfishness in dealing with her, or rather  _not_  dealing with her, until a moment ago. 

“I forgot that I was helping a ‘you,’” she admitted, “and I made us a ‘we.’  I started acting like we were a unit.”  It didn’t sound nefarious but Derek knew that, in practice, it was.  And apparently Laura knew it too.  “I acted like whatever I wanted, of course you wanted it too and I had the cattle prod of Kate in my back pocket any time there was the slightest possibility otherwise.  I forgot about you somewhere in the middle of it.”  She stared down at her knees for a long moment and then she was standing, resettling on the coffee table and reaching out for his hand, expression torn between uncertainty and apology.  “You were so uninterested in living your own life that I made you an extension of mine and I’m sorry.  I am sorry.”

Derek’s next breath was a shaky one but, for once, it didn’t feel like too much.  Instead it felt like he was losing one of the heavy weights he’d carried for so long.  He grasped her hand back rather than keeping his own limp and told her, “I’m sorry I haven’t been there.”  Because he was.  He had retreated from her, despite knowing she needed him.  He hadn’t been able to stomach her company though, because of the way she made  _him_  feel.  “I didn’t think you’d want me.  I was afraid if I stayed, you’d figure that out and it was easier to pretend like it was what  _I_  wanted than have you confirm it.”

She sniffed hard, dropped his hand and leaned away from him with a scoff.  Her eyes were shining though and she swiped at the underside of her nose with the inside of her wrist.  “That’s because you’re an idiot, Derrière,” she said smartly, voice wobbling.

* * *

Derek didn’t wake Laura when she fell asleep on his couch around quarter to six in the morning, after a night of watching reruns of  _The Powerpuff Girls_  and pretending they might say more to each other.  They didn’t but Derek was no longer afraid to.  He’d thought, for a long time, that he could break them.  Never realizing that Laura had the same fear.  Or what an irrational one it was to have to begin with.  They were family and it meant something, something with a real permanence to it.

It was closing in on seven in the evening as he buttoned his shirtsleeves with cufflinks Laura had bought him two Christmases ago.  She was still sleeping and somehow her face looked more full of exhaustion than it had this morning.  Derek flicked a lock of dark hair back from her forehead with a frown.  This was the woman who had tossed his mistakes back in his face every chance she got, the girl who’d pushed him out of a treehouse when he was five and broken his wrist, the sister who’d written the apology letter for it on his cast in her huge seven-year-old handwriting so no one else could sign.  (He hadn’t wanted anyone else to anyway after his mom had read him what it said).  And he loved her.

He felt like he’d come close to forgetting that.  Though, now, he genuinely didn’t know how.

He was a few minutes late to his destination but he hadn’t missed any of the performance that mattered and, afterwards, he knew exactly where he was going.

Stiles wasn’t one of the last dancers to exit this time, though he did hang back just as before.  At least until he saw Derek.  He loped over after the tide of people had trickled out, brow heavily furrowed.

“Hey,” Derek said softly, not entirely sure he wanted to be overheard by the milling dancers.  He couldn’t help his smile though, how stupid and full it was.  “You might’ve been even better this time,” he told Stiles truthfully.  Though it was entirely possible that Derek had simply forgotten the brilliance of it because, seeing Stiles dance, it was almost enough to make him believe in things he hadn’t since he was a kid.

Stiles scoffed, pulling his hoodie’s sleeves down over his hands.  “You watched it again?”  His tone was full of disbelief.

Derek shrugged.  “My sister and I have seats.”  More truthfully though: “And I love watching you dance.”

It had the complete opposite effect of what Derek would’ve expected.  Stiles’ face dropped, going not just dark but  _murderous_.  His nostrils flared, expression defaulting into a glower.  “Still with this?”  He pointed at Derek, thumb and forefinger out like he was miming a weapon.  “You get that I’m not your fucking boyfriend, right?”  Derek fought not to recoil from the poison behind his words.  “The novelty of screwing inner-city trash really hasn’t worn off yet?  I get it,” he snorted, “I’m the safe kind of dangerous, right?  But I gotta think this has run its course by now.”  

Derek had no idea where this was coming from and he grabbed the inside of Stiles’ elbow to keep him from storming off.  He would’ve thought the very last vibe in the world he was giving out was that he only thought of Stiles as a bit of fun or that he was  _ever_  looking to drop him.  “I told you that I don’t think of you that way,” he said, trying not to sound as bewildered and blindsided as he felt.  He injected some heft behind the words, “I meant that.”

Stiles laughed meanly.  “Yeah, but I have two brain cells to rub together so I happen to know the fuck better.”   He nudged Derek with his elbow but it wasn’t convivial.  He was trying to literally push him off balance.  “Come on, man.  Doesn’t your sister work for a newspaper or a magazine or some bullshit?  When’s the article gonna publish about how filthy a studio apartment can get or what it’s like to ride a  _subway_  or to fuck someone you could buy and sell sixteen times over?”  He rubbed at his lip under the ring and let out a harsh puff of air.  “Just fucking pull the ripcord already, all right, because you’re seriously starting to worry me here.  Like maybe you think whatever the fuck this is  _means_  something.” 

Derek had forgotten all about the other dancers until one of them surged forward, petite and with red hair spilling down over her shoulders.  “Ignore him,” she said sharply and Derek glanced down and saw that she was digging long nails into Stiles’ forearm warningly.  She batted her eyelashes, a bit of mean girl confidence and snark to her.  “He’s been an extra special dick to everyone today,” she said with faux sweetness.

Derek fell back a step while Stiles continued to glare at him.  He should definitely leave because he wasn’t even entirely sure Stiles’ quarrel was with him or if he was just a convenient target to lash out at.  Isaac clapped him on the shoulder before he could decide one way or another, purposefully blocking Stiles’ eye line as he moved between them.  “Yeah, um, Derek,” he said awkwardly, but trying to be genial and inclusive in an attempt to negate Stiles’ behavior, “let me buy you a beer to make up for having to deal with him.”

Stiles knocked him away with a growled, “Fuck off.”

Derek frowned at him, genuinely concerned.  Stiles was combative but not like this, not indiscriminately.  “Did something happen?” he asked Isaac quietly, knowing better than to try to discuss anything with Stiles right now. 

Stiles interrupted darkly, “Hey, here’s an idea, if you have a question about  _me_  maybe you should fucking ask  _me_?”

“Yeah, because you’re so damn pleasant to deal with right now, Stilinski,” Jackson said from behind him.  He somehow looked even more smug today.

“He can take care of himself,” Stiles snarled without turning.  He really didn’t care  _who_  he had to take this fight to, just so long as he got one.  His lip raised in a sneer and he locked eyes with Derek.  “Right, Derek?  You’ve got a load of money and a face that could get away with gutting a kitten.  He’s going to be just fucking fine without any of your help.”

The floppy-haired kid Derek had seen Stiles with a few days ago pulled him bodily away and, to Derek’s surprise, he didn’t fight the motion.  “Stiles, dude, stop,” he hissed under his breath, leading him over to the lead girl, the tall brunette.  “Talk to me and Allison, okay?”

A blonde girl who was practically spilling out of her top took Stiles’ place and pointed out of the alleyway.  “We’re going to this little sandwich shop a few blocks down.”  She offered him a tight, apologetic smile, already lightly stepping back to follow Stiles, Allison and the shorter guy.  “We usually stop in for a drink after a show, let us buy you dinner as a thank you for even dealing with him, and for days on end too.”

Derek really didn’t want them to go to any trouble trying to make up for a guy he was fucking treating him like shit.  But he couldn’t deny that he wanted to know them and  _because_  they were Stiles’ friends.  He was already impressed (and surprised) that they seemed to be genuinely nice people.

“I really don’t know how you’ve managed it,” Isaac said, scratching his chin and saving Derek from having to answer the blonde girl one way or the other.  The subject of his musing also gave Derek an excuse to stare at Stiles’ back with a frown.  The shorter guy’s arm was over his shoulders and Allison’s head was bent close too, like the three of them were sharing a private conversation.  “I spend three hours around the guy,” Isaac was saying, “and I want to strangle myself.  Or him,” he added with a laugh.

The blonde girl rolled her eyes.  “He’s not  _that_  bad.”  She frowned and qualified, “Not usually anyway.”

Jackson had apparently caught up to them as he snottily added, “Right, he’s worse.”

The redhead was leaning into him and she sniffed superiorly, tilting her chin up defiantly. “Doesn’t seem to have stopped  _you_  from enjoying his company, Jackson.”  So she knew about them then.

Jackson grinned toothily at her, winked.  “Being able to stuff things in his mouth definitely helps.”

Derek nearly ran into the floppy-haired kid as he’d been looking behind him to listen to Jackson and hadn’t realized that the three ahead of them had slowed way down.  He reached between Derek and the blonde to shove Jackson in the shoulder.  “Sick, that’s my brother, man.”  Derek’s brow furrowed.  He hadn’t even known Stiles  _had_  a brother.

But then, truthfully, he realized, he barely knew anything about him. 

Stiles and Allison reached the shop first.  It was narrow and crowded and the lot of them took up more than half of it.  The floppy-haired kid seemed to know the orders by rote and rattled them off while the rest of them crowded into a booth.  He and Stiles ended up on opposite sides on the outside of it and somehow his mood seemed to’ve soured even further during the walk.  Derek pressed the toe of his foot to Stiles’ ankle, hoping that was ambiguous enough that he could read it as whatever he needed it to be – apology or comfort or solidarity.  Stiles kicked him away with a scowl and Derek decided he was through with him for the time being.

Stiles clearly wasn’t interested in his company tonight, or anyone else’s.  Derek got that.  That there were bad days.  At least he hoped that was all this was.  If Stiles was like this tomorrow too, well, there was only so much abuse Derek was willing to put up with. 

Isaac shoved into Stiles, shoulder digging up into his armpit.  Purposefully annoying him, and asked, “What is your deal?”

Stiles opened his mouth furiously and he started, voice shaking, “Why don’t you just—” before his gaze caught back on Derek, a smirk stole over his mouth and he twisted, grabbed Isaac by the shoulder and pulled him onto his mouth.

Isaac groaned, lips slipping open and bodies moving in tandem, in something that looked like a  _familiar_ pattern.  Derek’s hands had curled into fists without him realizing and he felt like his blood was  _vibrating_.  It took Isaac less time than Derek would’ve expected to put a stop to it, pushing Stiles off hard by his collarbone and muttering while wiping his mouth, “Dick move, man.”  His gaze started to cut over to Derek but he let it drop before it got there.  

Which was fine, because Derek couldn’t look at either one of them anyway. 

Stiles chuckled under his breath, brushed a thumb over the wetness on his lip and then he was up and moving to the far end of the shop, opposite the door they’d come in and Derek followed him with barely a thought, cornering him in the one stall, unisex bathroom.

He locked the door behind them.

Stiles looked up from where he’d been splashing water on his face, eyes seeming to pierce into Derek’s through the mirror.  “What do you want, Derek?”  And it sounded more curious than dismissive.

“I  _don’t_  want a boyfriend, Stiles,” he snarled, grabbing him by the arm – hard – and turning him around.  That seemed to be what all of this was about, what Stiles was trying to prove, that Derek didn’t have even a tiny piece of him.  “If I did, trust me, it sure as hell wouldn’t be you.”

Stiles shoved him back up against the door, jammed a hand down his pants to fist his dick and snarled back, “Good.”

But it wasn’t, of course.  Because Derek was lying through his teeth and he may, in fact, _not_  have even a tiny piece of Stiles, but Stiles had  _all_  of him.

* * *

Stiles’ nastiness had cooled some by the next morning but the determination to keep Derek at a distance was still going strong.  He rolled out of bed without lingering, as Derek had come to expect, and Derek watched as a plain t-shirt rolled down over the vibrance splashed across Stiles’ back and faded jeans covered the claw marks on his thigh and finally got up the nerve to ask, “What do they mean?”

Stiles shrugged and said coldly, “Who the fuck says they mean anything?”  He grabbed his sweatshirt off the lip of the sink and left without saying goodbye. 

Derek fell back against the mattress and contemplated inevitability versus idiocy.  He’d known from the very second he’d met Stiles that this was as much as he was capable of, that this had the shortest of short expiration dates on it, and yet.  And yet the more time he spent with Stiles, the more time he  _wanted_  to spend with Stiles.  The more he learned about him, the more he  _wanted_  to learn.  Was that inevitable or was he just being an idiot?

He still didn’t know by the time he dragged himself back through his door.

* * *

The knock on Derek’s door two days later was… startling.  Laura and Peter didn’t knock, they swept in and started speaking as it they’d already been mid-conversation.  Stiles kind of did the same, walked in without waiting to be invited but only hunched up his shoulders and didn’t speak.

Derek wasn’t used to that.  Wasn’t used to a Stiles that didn’t know what to say, that came to him feeling wrong-footed.  Derek’s jaw went slack as he realized Stiles was here to  _apologize_  to him and he genuinely had no idea how. 

“The other night—” 

“You were an asshole,” Derek finished and affirmed, helping him out even though he didn’t really deserve it.  Derek just had an inside understanding of how hard this was. 

Stiles’ mouth tightened but he nodded.  “Yeah.”

Derek licked his lip, closed his door and said simply, “So make it up to me.”

Stiles did.  Twice.  And in ways he definitely never had before; Derek hadn’t even known people  _did_  some of those things. 

“You know,” Derek murmured, stopping him from popping back up, dressing in record time and breezing out of his apartment like he always did, “just because you sleep here, it doesn’t mean you owe me anything.  And it doesn’t mean you’re promising me anything.”

Stiles watched him for a long moment, eyes dark and dancing before he laid back down and stayed the night.

* * *

Neither he or Stiles were expecting to walk into his kitchen for coffee and find Laura there but somehow that was exactly what happened anyway.

Laura’s eyes widened at the sight of Stiles, half-dressed in Derek’s boxer briefs and rubbing at the stubble on his cheeks, but her gaze didn’t stay on him for long.  It shot to Derek and practically burned into him.  “You’ve got to be kidding me with this,” she said tightly and there was a note to her voice that Derek had only ever heard in their mom’s, disapproving to the point of inducing shame.  And Derek had  _nothing_  to be ashamed about.  She rose out of her seat and talked about Stiles like he wasn’t in the room.  “Derek, you brought him back  _here_?”  She scoffed in pure disbelief.  “Did you give him a key too, preferred access with your doorman, would you like to start boxing up all your possessions  _for_  him?”

“Laura,” he tried to cut her off sharply but she didn’t heed it, waving him off.

“I know you think I’m trying to—No,” she shook her head, “I  _don’t_  know what you think but all I want to do is look out for you here.  He’s bad news and I know you can’t see that, for whatever reason, but he is  _going to_  hurt you.  It’s written all over him in those damn tattoos you like so much.”

Stiles huffed out a breathless laugh, touching Derek’s side gently to maneuver around him and back to the bedroom as he muttered under his breath, “Doesn’t look like you fucking need me for this.”

“Stiles,” Derek tried softly but half-heartedly.  He was pretty much right about it anyway and this was better worked out without the audience.  He dragged a hand into his hair, rubbed his knuckles against his scalp and said tiredly, “You’re wrong.”  He wasn’t angry, he was just tired – mainly because he saw no end to playing referee between these two people for as long as they were both in his life.  He believed Laura, that she genuinely thought she was helping, but he needed her to cut it the hell out.  Even if it was a mistake, she needed to let him make this one.  He sighed and said, “You don’t look at him and see him, Laura.  I do.  You see exactly what he wants you to,” Derek admitted, because Stiles purposefully tried to cultivate the image Laura was responding to, “I can’t even fault you for thinking it when he tries so hard to make sure you do.  But you’re always telling me to trust you, maybe it’s time you tried to trust me back.”

Derek could practically see her deflate, shoulders dropping and she let out a steady breath before nodding, once.  She left without any more cajoling and Derek padded off back to his bedroom, wondering what he was in for now with Stiles.

He was sitting on the edge of Derek’s mattress, still only in those boxer briefs, hunched over and biting his thumbnail.  He looked up when Derek walked in and it was clear he had overheard his and Laura’s conversation, had probably even been straining to.  He laughed under his breath.  “You got a safe hiding all your valuables or what, man?”

Derek collapsed down onto the bed on the other side of him, rolling away from him and slipping an arm under his pillow so he could press it to his cheek.  Stiles could be so fucking exhausting, and not in a good way.  Derek had told him multiple times that he didn’t care about his wealth, or lack thereof, that he didn’t make value judgments based on his income but Stiles didn’t even seem to hear him and Derek was done wasting the breath trying to get through to him.  “What’s the point of even correcting you anymore, Stiles?” he said aloud.  “You’re clearly going to think whatever you want about me, about how I think of you.”  He shrugged.  “I’m done trying to convince you.”

Derek was starting to doze by the time he felt the bed dip next to him.  He was somewhere between having assumed Stiles had left and having forgotten he was there, head foggy, when arms wrapped around his chest from behind.  Stiles spooned up to him, cheek pressed to Derek’s shoulder and he said softly, “You know, my mom died too.  When I was ten.” 

Derek blinked, barely daring to breathe, not wanting to upset Stiles from holding him, from sharing something personal about himself unprompted. 

“She’d been sick for a long time,” he murmured into Derek’s shoulder, breath warm, “it didn’t make it any easier but at least we knew it was coming, you know?”  His chin rasped across Derek’s skin and his hands were dry on Derek’s chest.  “There were all kinds of bills I didn’t know about, that my dad’s salary as a sheriff barely covered but I was a kid, right?  He didn’t tell me any of that stuff, the adult stuff, the extra hard stuff.” 

He felt Stiles’ cheek fill out with a smile against his shoulder and he kept on in a warm sort of voice, “I was so proud of him, of what he did.  But in that little kid way, you know?  Where you’re kind of selfish and possessive about it, he was  _my_  dad and he was a superhero.  So when he got shot, I—” Derek gasped, eyes widening and he felt Stiles swallow before going on, “I didn’t really get it.  Because he was a superhero, he’d always been a superhero and the fact that he survived, survived a gunshot to the  _head_ , that he was still alive, that proved it, didn’t it?”

The words warbled at the end and Stiles paused so long that Derek thought maybe the question hadn’t been rhetorical, maybe he really wanted to know.  But then his mouth was pressed to the ball of Derek’s shoulder and he was brushing it back and forth before pulling back.  “They said he wasn’t.”  His voice was croakier now.  “His heart was beating and they told me he was dead and I just kept thinking: you don’t know.  You don’t know about the superhero thing.  Superheroes always woke up, that was just how it  _worked_.  And I was too old to think like that really, but when it’s your dad—it never really goes away, you know?  You think they can do the impossible until they can’t, right?  Besides, I didn’t know anything and people in my position, they always seemed to know what to do.  And I didn’t.  I didn’t make decisions like that, I didn’t know how, so he couldn’t leave me because I didn’t have that feeling.  That feeling that I knew what I was doing.”

Derek felt Stiles shudder against him and his voice was choked and there was a really good chance that Stiles was crying.  Derek didn’t turn around to see.  It would’ve felt like an intrusion somehow and, regardless, Stiles was plastered to him so tightly that it would’ve been an effort to roll over. 

“I kept him alive for almost a year,” he admitted like it was a horrible secret, voice scratchy.  “In pain.  Alive but not, like that.  Because I was selfish and I was scared and I didn’t want to be alone.”  His fingers dug into Derek’s chest and they were starting to get damp from their body heat.  “They talked to me about resources, the room, the bed, implied it was all a waste but they didn’t talk about the money.”  He shook his head against Derek’s arm and he could feel the wetness from his cheeks.  “Maybe they tried and I didn’t even hear them.  I don’t think it would have made a difference if I had, he was my dad.”  He swallowed audibly and laughed a bitter laugh.  “All I ever knew how to do was dance.  I loved it, when I was little, when my mom was alive, but now… Now I don’t even enjoy it, I just  _need_  it.”  He laughed again, this one wetter.  “I’m in debt so far over my head that I’ll probably never get out and everything I used to love feels worthless now, tainted or something.”  His arms squeezed around Derek and he said in a low, conspiratorial sort of tone, “How sick is it that I envy you that your family went quick?  I wish.”  He coughed out something that maybe was supposed to be a laugh, said tightly, “I wish mine had.” 

Derek rolled over, unable to not offer  _something_  – something that turned out to be the desperate drag of his mouth against Stiles’, his fingers gripping his hips and pulling him close, desperately swallowing down the words, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ because he suspected they would make Stiles run in a way nothing else could.  He knew it was true though, said or not, and it scared the hell out of him. 

He couldn’t imagine what it would do to Stiles.

They didn’t fuck then.  They made love and Derek hoped Stiles would be able to forgive him for it. 

He traced the ears of the wolf on Stiles’ warm, sweat-slick back and said softly, “They do mean something, don’t they?”

Stiles nodded after a bit of a lag, a content sound brewing in his gut as he rolled over to drag his fingers through Derek’s sweaty hair.  “My ex,” he said after a moment of deciding whether or not he wanted to say  _anything_ , “he was an aspiring tattoo artist.  He’s pro now, gets paid crazy amounts of money to scar people.”  He snorted like that was some great irony and shrugged.  “He did all of them.”  He bounced his brows.  “I lucked out that he wasn’t shit, right?”  He rolled his shoulders and said with a fondness Derek wouldn’t have expected of him, “Boyd never met a challenge he didn’t overcome though.” 

Derek would’ve expected Stiles was the type of person to end every relationship with a burned bridge.  It was nice to know there was at least one that hadn’t seemed to end in flames.  It was a promising precedent as Derek had had enough fire to last him a lifetime.

He walked his fingers over the spiral on his side and asked curiously, “Did you pick them?”

Stiles shook his head. 

Derek raised his eyebrows in surprise, said almost disbelievingly, “You let him decide?” 

Stiles shrugged.  “He asked me what I wanted.  I asked him what he saw.” 

Derek almost smiled over that.  It was just such a Stiles-response.  “And?”

Stiles held up his foot, folded his thigh into his chest so he could rub his thumb over the soft curve of the feather there.  “He did this one first.  That’s how we met,” Stiles smirked as he remembered, “he saw me dance, said he wanted to ink it into me so I’d remember him when I thought about passion.”  He placed his palm over the one on his heart.  “Then he did the crow because he said I wore it like an albatross around my neck, my sorrow, the deaths I’d watched happen, that they were all I had room for in my heart.”  Derek swallowed because this man had known Stiles, had seen him in a way Derek was only beginning to and the tattoos were like a road map.  Derek felt a kinship to this Boyd person, like he was trying to help Derek avoid pitfalls and roadblocks he’d butted up against himself.  So he could make sure the next person who got close enough to see this much of Stiles would be able to stick it out.  “The triskele’s for family, for loyalty.  The Celtic thing on my side is the symbol for warrior.  The world’s eye on my neck, Boyd always said that meant promise.”  Stiles’ lips twitched weakly like he didn’t believe there was much left.  “The claw marks?  Wounded.  The tree, the way it twists like that, he said it represented growth but not necessarily the healthy kind.  The wolf trawling along the roots was because I was a loner.” 

Derek repeated them back in his head, took note of what complemented his own issues and what he could solve of Stiles’.

“You said—A long time ago, you said I fuck like I dance.”

Derek blinked up at him.  He hadn’t realized how intensely Stiles was looking at him, hadn’t realized this was coming.  “You do,” he said warily.

“And I dance like I’m angry with the world.”  Stiles said it like he meant to confirm it but the delivery had been too certain.

“Aren’t you?” Derek challenged.  “You fuck like you’re trying to drown yourself in it.  It’s not… release, it’s punishment.  You’re miserable, Stiles,” he said softly, “and it reflects in everything you do.”

Stiles’ lips twitched up before they fell back to their default.  “Just like you,” he said in a thin voice.

Derek nodded, not at all ashamed to admit it because, for the first time, he thought maybe he didn’t want to be.  Maybe he was trying for something  _better_  than that.  “Yes.” 

Stiles huffed out a laugh, twitching up the blanket over him with a nervous, cringing sort of smile and he said without humor, “Guess that old saying holds true, huh?  Misery really does love company.”

* * *

In the end, Derek was surprised that he hadn’t seen it coming.  Of course Stiles wouldn’t answer his door, of course Isaac would apologize and shoo him away from the theater, of course Stiles would turn avoiding him into an art form all its own.  He’d shared something intensely personal with Derek and then he’d retreated as far as physically possible to try to undo what he’d done in a moment of weakness, of gratefulness, of whatever had driven him to confide in Derek.

Because Stiles didn’t.  Confide, share, need him.  And he was proving that retroactively now.

Derek only wished he felt  _at all_  the same.  Instead he wore his lacrosse sweatpants and sat on his couch and ate cereal and hoped if he just stayed put long enough, someone would find him and he wouldn’t be so lost anymore.

* * *

It actually ended up working out a lot like that.  Stiles didn’t knock, just yanked on the open door and tossed a newspaper into Derek’s chest, demanding, “Did you see it?”

Derek blinked at him.  Got confused.  Then angry.  “See what?” he said sharply, even as he scanned the paper.  It wasn’t exactly a glowing review of Stiles’ performance, but it  _was_  a positive one. 

“See the way you fucking  _changed_  me,” Stiles snarled, voice shaking while he stabbed at his own chest with the points of his fingertips, “what the fuck you’ve done to me.  You had no right to—” 

Derek threw the paper down, nostrils flaring and taking a few steps closer to a wildly gesticulating Stiles.  “To what?” he challenged.  “To—”  _‘love you.’_  

Stiles didn’t let him say the words and Derek couldn’t even summon the energy to pretend to be surprised by that.  He wasn’t going to coddle Stiles here though, not anymore.  If he was going to be in, then he was going to be  _all_  in.  No more of this half-assed shit, no more of these exaggerated reasons not to  _try_.  

“‘Hopeful,’” he said with a derisive scoff, “they’re calling it  _hopeful_ now.  Ends the same,” he said less raucously and more like a normal conversation, “but the emotion behind it’s twisted.  Undergone some kind of ‘evolution.’”  He was clearly quoting from this article that he thought was such bullshit that he’d brought it to Derek’s door to make sure he saw it.  “I didn’t want that.  I don’t want—”

“I’m not exactly thrilled my happiness is dependent on you either, Stiles,” he cut him off in a snarl.  And he wasn’t.  Because Stiles was going to make it so  _difficult_ , because that was just what he  _did_.  But it’s not as though Derek really had a choice in the matter, because it wasn’t Stiles or  _someone else_.  It was Stiles or holing up in his apartment, devouring Russian Literature and trying not to brush up against the random stranger.  “At least I’ve accepted it.”  Because he had.

Stiles tugged his lip ring into his mouth with his teeth and said on a huff of breath, shaky but audible, “I’m not easy to love, Derek, and – looking just at past precedent – people leave me.”  He laughed unsteadily.  “Kind of all the time.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Derek said bleakly, unable to believe that someone who seemed to know so much had so badly misunderstood this.  “Your problem’s the exact opposite.  You  _are_  easy to love,” Derek paused, licked his lip, explained, “you just don’t want to let people.”

Stiles opened his mouth and Derek could see the argument forming in him before he closed his eyes and forcibly swallowed it down.  He took an infinitesimal step closer and said, “I think I want to let  _you_.”

**Author's Note:**

> You should probably follow me on [tumblr](http://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com). (So I can justify spending more time on tumblr.)


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